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felzer

HR: 09:00h
AN: S11C-05
TI: Evidence that Stress Amplitude Does Not Affect the Temporal Distribution of Aftershocks
AU: * Felzer, K R
EM: kfelzer@gps.caltech.edu
AF: U.S. Geological Survey, 525 S. Wilson, Pasadena, CA 91106
AB: Most physical aftershock triggering models, including the rate and state friction model of Dieterich (1994), the stress corrosion model (see discussion in Gomberg, 2001) and other accelerating failure models predict that larger stress changes on a fault will lead to an aftershocks that happens more quickly (larger clock advance), all else equal. Thus as stress change amplitude decreases with distance from the mainshock, there is an expected shift in the aftershock distribution toward longer time delays. This effect was formalized by Dieterich (1994) as an increase of the modified Omori Law c value (N(t) = A/(t+c)^p where t = time, N(t) = aftershock rate, and A, p, and c are constants). Jones and Hauksson (1998), however, found no change in c value with distance after the 1992 M_W 7.3 Landers earthquake. The assumption that the aftershock temporal distribution is independent of distance is also made in ETAS (Epidemic Triggering Aftershock Sequence) aftershock simulations (Ogata, 1998; Helmstetter, 2002) without adverse affect on fitting real data. Here we verify the independence of stress change and aftershock temporal distribution using a data set of 33 M 5-6 mainshocks from throughout California. These mainshocks are large enough to produce a significant number of aftershocks in the near and far field, but small enough to be frequent and thus provide good statistical sampling. Our data verifies that the temporal distribution of aftershocks is independent of stress change amplitude. We suggest that the most likely explanation for this observation is that the timing of each fault that participates in an aftershock sequence is independent of the amplitude of the stress that triggers it. In this case aftershock decay with distance from the mainshock cannot be caused by smaller clock advances on lesser-stressed faults, as in the Dieterich (1994) model, but rather by a stress amplitude dependent probability that a fault will be clock advanced at all. In future work we hope to explore physical models that could result in this type of triggering.
DE: 1217 Time variable gravity (7223, 7230)
DE: 1242 Seismic cycle related deformations (6924, 7209, 7223, 7230)
DE: 7260 Theory
SC: Seismology [S]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005