1. Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington, District of Columbia 20015, USA
2. Department of Earth Science, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA
3. Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
4. Deceased.

Correspondence to: Taka'aki Taira¹ Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to T.T. (Email: taira@dtm.ciw.edu).

Abstract

Fault strength is a fundamental property of seismogenic zones, and its temporal changes can increase or decrease the likelihood of failure and the ultimate triggering of seismic events. Although changes in fault strength have been suggested to explain various phenomena, such as the remote triggering of seismicity¹, there has been no means of actually monitoring this important property in situ. Here we argue that 20 years of observation (1987–2008) of the Parkfield area at the San Andreas fault have revealed a means of monitoring fault strength. We have identified two occasions where long-term changes in fault strength have been most probably induced remotely by large seismic events, namely the 2004 magnitude (M) 9.1 Sumatra–Andaman earthquake and the earlier 1992 M = 7.3 Landers earthquake. In both cases, the change possessed two manifestations: temporal variations in the properties of seismic scatterers—probably reflecting the stress-induced migration of fluids—and systematic temporal variations in the characteristics of repeating-earthquake sequences that are most consistent with changes in fault strength. In the case of the 1992 Landers earthquake, a period of reduced strength probably triggered the 1993 Parkfield aseismic transient^{2, 3, 4, 5} as well as the accompanying cluster of four M > 4 earthquakes at Parkfield. The fault-strength changes produced by the distant 2004 Sumatra–Andaman earthquake are especially important, as they suggest that the very largest earthquakes may have a global influence on the strength of the Earth's fault systems. As such a perturbation would bring many fault zones closer to failure, it should lead to temporal clustering of global seismicity. This hypothesis seems to be supported by the unusually high number of M  8 earthquakes occurring in the few years following the 2004 Sumatra–Andaman earthquake.

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