Accelerated Stress Buildup on the Southern San Andreas Fault and Surrounding Regions Caused by Mojave Desert Earthquakes
Andrew M. Freed and Jian Lin (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Summary
“Scientists have hypothesized for decades that one major earthquake can trigger another earthquake on a nearby fault through stress interaction. More recent studies have further suggested that this interaction may be delayed by the slow viscous creeping of rocks in the Earth’s lower crust and upper mantle. This is best illustrated by the 1999 magnitude 7.1 Hector Mine earthquake, which occurred only 30 km away from the 1992 magnitude 7.3 Landers quake, but seven and half years later. The delay between these events can be explained by viscous flow consistent with observations of continuous ground deformation following the Landers quake (Freed and Lin, 2001).
In our more recent study (Freed and Lin, 2002), we further calculated how the Landers, Hector Mine, and two other earthquakes in the Mojave Desert have changed stresses on the nearby southern San Andreas and adjacent fault systems.”
http://seismo.berkeley.edu/seismo/annual_report/ar01_02/node25.html
