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SUMMARY It is well known that large earthquakes often exhibit significant rupture complexity such as well separated subevents. With improved recording and data processing techniques, small earthquakes have been found to exhibit rupture complexity as well. Studying these small earthquakes offers the opportunity to better understand the possible causes of rupture complexities. Specifically, if they are random or are related to fault properties. We examine microearthquakes (M < 3) in the Parkfield, California, area that are recorded by a high-resolution borehole network. We quantify earthquake complexity by the deviation of source time functions and source spectra from simple circular (omega-square) source models. We establish thresholds to declare complexity, and find that it can be detected in earthquakes larger than magnitude 2, with the best resolution above M2.5. Comparison between the two approaches reveals good agreement (>90 per cent), implying both methods are characterizing the same source complexity. For the two methods, 60–80 per cent (M 2.6–3) of the resolved events are complex depending on the method. The complex events we observe tend to cluster in areas of previously identified structural complexity; a larger fraction of the earthquakes exhibit complexity in the days following the Mw 6 2004 Parkfield earthquake. Ignoring the complexity of these small events can introduce artefacts or add uncertainty to stress drop measurements. Focusing only on simple events however could lead to systematic bias, scaling artefacts and the lack of measurements of stress in structurally complex regions.
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This content will become publicly available on December 10, 2025
Characterizing Directivity in Small (M 2.4–5) Aftershocks of the Ridgecrest Sequence
ABSTRACT Directivity, or the focusing of energy along the direction of an earthquake rupture, is a common property of earthquakes of all sizes and can cause increased hazard due to azimuthally dependent ground-motion amplification. For small earthquakes, the effects of directivity are generally less pronounced due to reduced rupture size, yet the directivity in small events can bias source property estimates and provide important insights into general regional faulting patterns. However, due to observational limitations, directivity is usually only measured and modeled for large events. As such, many studies of small earthquakes either ignore directivity altogether or assume a constant rupture direction for all events in a cluster. In our study, we apply a refined directivity fitting method constrained with two separate methods of source deconvolution to the dataset of aftershocks of the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes, which contain a large number of well-recorded small-to-mid sized earthquakes occurring in close proximity to each other. The revealed directivity of 100+ small (M 2.4–5) earthquakes is highly heterogeneous and primarily oblique to and away from the main fault strike, suggesting a complex postseismic stress redistribution. In addition, the energy focusing effect of directivity appears to bias the selection of high-quality data from stations in the direction of rupture, leading to average stress-drop increases of 50% if directivity is not accounted for.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2225216
- PAR ID:
- 10610319
- Publisher / Repository:
- Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
- Volume:
- 115
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0037-1106
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1177 to 1188
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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