Characterization of the San Jacinto Fault Zone near Anza, California, from Fault Zone Trapped Waves

Yong-Gang Li, & Frank L. Vernon

Published 2001, SCEC Contribution #598

We installed three 350-m-long seismic arrays, each array consisting of 12 three-component stations, across the Coyote Creek fault (CCF), Clark Valley fault (CVF), and Buck Ridge fault (BRF) of the San Jacinto fault zone (SJFZ) near Anza, California, to record fault zone trapped waves from microearthquakes. We observed trapped waves with relatively large amplitudes and long duration at stations close to the fault traces for earthquakes occurring within the fault zone. The coda-normalized amplitude spectra of trapped waves showed peaks at 4–7 Hz, which decreased sharply with the distance from the fault trace. Observations and three-dimensional finite difference simulations of trapped waves revealed low-velocity and low-Q waveguides on these active faults with the width of 75–100 m in which shear velocities are reduced by 25–30% from wall rock velocities and Q values are 40–90 at depths between the surface and 18 km. The locations of earthquakes for which we observed trapped waves delineate the most seismically active fault strands of the SJFZ in a region with complicated slip planes near Anza. The low-velocity waveguides inferred from trapped waves extend 15 to 20 km in the length on these active faults and are segmented by the fault discontinuities. The waveguide on the BRF dips south westward to connect the waveguide on the CVF, which dips northeastward. This waveguide extends at the seismogenic depth through Anza slip gap to another low-velocity waveguide on the Casa Loma fault (CLF), which has been delineated in our previous study of the SJFZ using trapped waves [Li et al., 1997]. The waveguide on the CCF in Coyote Mountain is nearly vertical and disconnected from the CLF at the south edge of Anza gap. We interpret the low-velocity waveguides on these active strands to partly result from recent prehistoric significant earthquakes on them and evaluate the future earthquake in the Anza region

Citation
Li, Y., & Vernon, F. L. (2001). Characterization of the San Jacinto Fault Zone near Anza, California, from Fault Zone Trapped Waves. Journal of Geophysical Research, 106(B12), 30671-30688.