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Migration of seismic scatterers associated with the 1993 Parkfield aseismic transient event

Nature volume 426, pages 544–548 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

The time-varying deformation field within a fault zone, particularly at depths where earthquakes occur, is important for understanding fault behaviour and its relation to earthquake occurrence1,2,3. But detection of this temporal variation has been extremely difficult, although laboratory studies have long suggested that certain structural changes, such as the properties of crustal fractures, should be seismically detectable4. Here we present evidence that such structural changes are indeed observable. In particular, we find a systematic temporal variation in the seismograms of repeat microearthquakes that occurred on the Parkfield segment of the San Andreas fault over the decade 1987–97. Our analysis reveals a change of the order of 10 m in the location of scatterers which plausibly lie within the fault zone at a depth of ∼3 km. The motion of the scatterers is coincident, in space and time, with the onset of a well documented aseismic transient (deformation event). We speculate that this structural change is the result of a stress-induced redistribution of fluids in fluid-filled fractures caused by the transient event.

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Figure 1: The Parkfield study area and geodetic results.
Figure 2: Cluster K3.
Figure 3: Temporal change in average D(t) and relative distances of events with respect to the first event.
Figure 4: Quantities derived from synthetic seismograms a, τ(t); b, D(t).
Figure 5: Differential vertical-component seismograms and the locations of the ‘moving’ scatterer(s).

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Acknowledgements

We thank the people who are involved in the installation and maintenance of the High Resolution Seismic Network, and also thank M. Fehler, P. Malin, E. Roeloffs, C. Thurber and L. Wen for discussions, and A. Rubin and S. Roecker for reviews. This work was supported by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Rice University, NASA and USGS. Partial processing of the data was done at the University of California's Berkeley Seismological Laboratory and at the Center for Computational Seismology (CCS) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Science, MS-126, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, Houston, Texas, 77005, USA

    Fenglin Niu

  2. Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 5241 Broad Branch Road, NW, Washington DC, 20015, USA

    Fenglin Niu & Paul G. Silver

  3. Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, University of California Berkeley, and Earth Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, 94720, USA

    Robert M. Nadeau & Thomas V. McEvilly

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  1. Fenglin Niu
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Correspondence to Fenglin Niu.

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Niu, F., Silver, P., Nadeau, R. et al. Migration of seismic scatterers associated with the 1993 Parkfield aseismic transient event. Nature 426, 544–548 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02151

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