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Earth science

Fertile fields for seismicity

Nature volume 509, pages 436–437 (2014)Cite this article

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An analysis of crustal uplift around California's San Joaquin Valley, caused by groundwater extraction, reveals that such removal leads to both seasonal and long-term unclamping of the nearby San Andreas Fault system. See Letter p.483

Earthquakes are one of the most devastating manifestations of plate tectonics. Plate boundaries, such as the one between the Pacific and North American plates in California, are broken into multiple blocks separated by faults of varying sizes. Our understanding of earthquake size and occurrence is generally considered from the perspective of a fault's geological history1,2, along with its present-day geodetic signature of surface deformation related to coupling of the fault at depth3. Earthquakes cause changes in stress along and across fault systems that either promote or deter seismicity4. Seismicity and fault stresses are considered largely on the basis of plate-boundary mechanics, without taking into account processes at Earth's surface, although the past decade has seen an increasing recognition that loading at the surface may be an important modulator of seismicity5,6,7,8.

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Figure 1: Aerial view of the San Andreas Fault along the Carrizo Plain, central California.

Tom Bean/Corbis

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  1. Paul Lundgren is in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91109, USA.,

    Paul Lundgren

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  1. Paul Lundgren
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Correspondence to Paul Lundgren.

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Lundgren, P. Fertile fields for seismicity. Nature 509, 436–437 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13338

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