Scaling of Fault Parameters for Continental Strike-Slip Earthquakes

Geoffrey C. King, & Steven G. Wesnousky

Published December 2007, SCEC Contribution #1094

The long-standing conflict between the predictions of elastic dislocation models and the observation that average coseismic slip increases with rupture length is resolved with application of a simple displacement-depth function and the assumption that the base of the seismogenic zone does not result from the onset of viscous relaxation but rather a transition to stable sliding in a medium that remains stressed at or close to failure. The resulting model maintains the idea of self-similarity for earthquakes across the entire spectrum of earthquake sizes.

Citation
King, G. C., & Wesnousky, S. G. (2007). Scaling of Fault Parameters for Continental Strike-Slip Earthquakes. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 97(6), 1833-1840. doi: 10.1785/0120070048.