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Abstract Dynamic triggering of earthquakes is when seismic waves from earthquakes induce seismic activity at a distance. The observability of the seismic wave stresses and their results presents a unique opportunity to understand earthquake interactions and associated hazard implications. The extent and timing of dynamic triggering at given specific stress changes still remain inadequately predicted due to limited studies and data sets. In particular, the requirement for complete, well‐characterized catalogs to detect triggering systematically seriously limits the types of studies possible. To address this, we utilized 7‐year continuous waveform data from 239 stations in southern California and used PhaseNet for phase picking to identify local earthquakes and measure triggering without constructing any earthquake catalog. We map the triggering intensity over the region and find that overall, the Mojave segment of the San Andreas is the most easily triggered region. However, the spatial pattern changes after the Ridgecrest earthquake and the area appears to become much less prone to triggering, likely due to an exhaustion of the faults near failure in the immediate aftermath of the Ridgecrest sequence. We further observe a slow decay rate of dynamic triggering and conclude that low‐frequency waves (0.04–0.1 Hz) may be more effective in dynamic triggering than high‐frequency waves (1–3 Hz) which is consistent with a rate‐state assisted aseismic creep or hydrological triggering mechanism. 

Tectonic tremor tracks the repeated slow rupture of certain major plate boundary faults. One of the most perplexing aspects about tremor is that some fault segments produce strongly periodic, spatially extensive tremor episodes, while others have more disorganized, asynchronous activity. Here, we measure the size of segments that activate synchronously during tremor episodes and the relationship to regional earthquake rate on major plate boundaries. Tremor synchronization in space seems to be limited by the activity of small, nearby crustal and intraslab earthquakes. This observation can be explained by a competition between the self-synchronization of fault segments and perturbation by regional earthquakes. Our results imply previously unrecognized interactions across subduction systems, in which earthquake activity far from the fault influences whether it breaks in small or large segments. 

The potential relationship between surface creep and deeper geological processes is unclear, even on one of the world’s best-studied faults. From June to August 2021, a large creep event with surface slip of more than 16 mm was recorded on the Calaveras fault in California, part of the San Andreas fault system. This event initially appeared to be accompanied by along-fault migration of seismicity, suggesting it penetrated to depth. Other studies have suggested that surface creep events are likely a shallow feature, unrelated to deep seismicity. To provide more detail on the relationship between earthquakes, surface creep, and potential aseismic slip at seismogenic depth, we tripled the number of earthquakes in the Northern California Earthquake Catalog in the region of the creep event for all of 2021. This was accomplished by implementing earthquake detection techniques based on both template matching (EQCorrscan) and AI-based automatic earthquake phase picking (PhaseNet). After manual inspection, the detected earthquakes were first located using Hypoinverse and subsequently relocated via GrowClust. Our enhanced catalog indicates that the spatiotemporal pattern of earthquakes here is not strongly influenced by the creep event and is better explained by structural heterogeneity than transient stress changes, indicating a decoupling of seismicity rate and surficial creep on this major fault.