Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Migration of early aftershocks following the 2004 Parkfield earthquake

Abstract

Large shallow earthquakes are immediately followed by numerous aftershocks. A significant portion of these events is missing in existing earthquake catalogues, mainly because seismicity after the mainshock can be masked by overlapping arrivals of waves from the mainshock and aftershocks1,2,3,4. However, recovery of the missing early aftershocks is important for understanding the physical mechanisms of earthquake triggering2,3,4, and for tracking postseismic deformation around the rupture zone associated with the mainshock5,6,7. Here we use the waveforms of 3,647 relocated earthquakes8 along the Parkfield section of the San Andreas fault as templates9,10 to detect missing aftershocks within three days of the 2004 magnitude 6.0 Parkfield earthquake. We identify 11 times more aftershocks than listed in the standard catalogue of the Northern California Seismic Network. We find that the newly detected aftershocks migrate in both along-strike and down-dip directions with logarithmic time since the mainshock, consistent with numerical simulations of the expansion of aftershocks caused by propagating afterslip11,12. The cumulative number of early aftershocks increases linearly with postseismic deformation in the first two days, supporting the view that aftershocks are driven primarily by afterslip13,14.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Map of the SAF and the 2004 Parkfield earthquake sequence.
Figure 2: Example of a detected early aftershock.
Figure 3: Migration of the Parkfield early aftershocks.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Kagan, Y. Y. Short-term properties of earthquake catalogues and models of earthquake source. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 94, 1207–1228 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Peng, Z., Vidale, J. E. & Houston, H. Anomalous early aftershock decay rates of the 2004 M6 Parkfield earthquake. Geophys. Res. Lett. 33, L17307 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Peng, Z., Vidale, J. E., Ishii, M. & Helmstetter, A. Seismicity rate immediately before and after main shock rupture from high-frequency waveforms in Japan. J. Geophys. Res. 112, B03306 (2007).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Enescu, B., Mori, J. & Miyazawa, M. Quantifying early aftershock activity of the 2004 mid-Niigata Prefecture earthquake (Mw 6.6). J. Geophys. Res. 112, B04310 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Tajima, F. & Kanamori, H. Global survey of aftershock area expansion patterns. Phys. Earth Planet. Inter. 40, 77–134 (1985).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Henry, C. & Das, S. Aftershock zones of large shallow earthquakes: Fault dimensions, aftershock area expansion and scaling relations. Geophys. J. Int. 147, 272–293 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Chang, C.-H., Wu, Y.-M., Zhao, L. & Wu, F.-T. Aftershocks of the 1999 Chi–Chi, Taiwan, Earthquake: The first hour. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 97, 1245–1258 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Thurber, C. et al. Three-dimensional compressional wavespeed model, earthquake relocations, and focal mechanisms for the Parkfield, California, region. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 96, S38–S49 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Gibbons, S. J. & Ringdal, F. The detection of low magnitude seismic events using array-based waveform correlation. Geophys. J. Int. 165, 149–166 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Shelly, D. R., Beroza, G. C. & Ide, S. Non-volcanic tremor and low-frequency earthquake swarms. Nature 446, 305–307 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Ariyoshi, K., Matsuzawa, T. & Hasegawa, A. The key frictional parameters controlling spatial variations in the speed of postseismic-slip propagation on a subduction plate boundary. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 256, 136–146 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Kato, N. Expansion of aftershock areas caused by propagating post-seismic sliding. Geophys. J. Int. 168, 797–808 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Perfettini, H. & Avouac, J.-P. Postseismic relaxation driven by brittle creep: A possible mechanism to reconcile geodetic measurements and the decay rate of aftershocks, application to the Chi–Chi earthquake, Taiwan. J. Geophys. Res. 109, B02304 (2004).

    Google Scholar 

  14. Hsu, Y. J. et al. Frictional afterslip following the 2005 Nias-Simeulue earthquake, Sumatra. Science 312, 1921–1926 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Bakun, W. H. et al. Implications for prediction and hazard assessment from the 2004 Parkfield earthquake. Nature 437, 969–974 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Johnson, K. M., Burgmann, R. & Larson, K. Frictional properties on the San Andreas Fault near Parkfield, California inferred from models of afterslip following the 2004 earthquake. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 96, S321–S338 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Murray, J. & Langbein, J. Slip on the San Andreas Fault at Parkfield, California, over two earthquake cycles, and the implications for seismic hazard. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 96, S283–S303 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Barbot, S., Fialko, Y. & Bock, Y. Postseismic deformation due to the Mw 6.0 2004 Parkfield earthquake: Stress-driven creep on a fault with spatially variable rate-and-state friction parameters. J. Geophys. Res. 114, B07405 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Chatelain, J.-L., Cardwell, R. K. & Isacks, B. L. Expansion of the aftershock zone following the Vanuatu (New Hebrides) earthquake on 15 July 1981. Geophys. Res. Lett. 10, 385–388 (1983).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Dieterich, J. A constitutive law for rate of earthquake production and its application to earthquake clustering. J. Geophys. Res. 99, 2601–2618 (1994).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Hill, D. P. & Prejean, S. G. in Earthquake Seismology Treatise on Geophysics (ed. Kanamori, H.) (Elsevier, 2007).

    Google Scholar 

  22. Nur, A. & Booker, J. R. Aftershocks caused by pore fluid flow? Science 175, 885–888 (1972).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Langbein, J., Murray, J. & Snyder, H. A. Coseismic and initial postseismic deformation from the 2004 Parkfield, California, earthquake, observed by Global Positioning System, creepmeters, and borehole strainmeters. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 96, S304–S320 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Freed, A. M. Afterslip (and only afterslip) following the 2004 Parkfield, California, earthquake. Geophys. Res. Lett. 34, L06312 (2007).

    Google Scholar 

  25. Savage, J. C. & Yu, S.-B. Postearthquake relaxation and aftershock accumulation linearly related after 2003 Chengkung (M6.5, Taiwan) and 2004 Parkfield (M6.0, California) earthquakes. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 97, 1632–1645 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Savage, J. C. & Langbein, J. Postearthquake relaxation after the 2004 M6 Parkfield, California, earthquake and rate-and-state friction. J. Geophys. Res. 113, B10407 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Rymer, M. J. et al. Surface fault slip associated with the 2004 Parkfield, California, Earthquake. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 96, S11–S27 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Nadeau, R. M. & Guilhem, A. Nonvolcanic tremor evolution and the San Simeon and Parkfield, California earthquakes. Science 325, 191–193 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Helmstetter, A. & Shaw, B. E. Afterslip and aftershocks in the rate-and-state friction law. J. Geophys. Res. 114, B01308 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Waldhauser, F., Ellsworth, W. L., Schaff, D. P. & Cole, A. Streaks, multiplets, and holes: High-resolution spatio-temporal behavior of Parkfield seismicity. Geophys. Res. Lett. 31, L18608 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The seismic data used in this study are recorded by the HRSN operated by Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, and are distributed by the Northern California Earthquake Data Center (NCEDC). We thank D. Shelly, K. Koper and C. Wu for their help in generating Supplementary Movies, N. Kato for sharing the results from the numerical simulation in the Kato12 paper, S. Barbot, K. Johnson, P.-C. Liu and J. Murray-Moraleda for sharing their mainshock slip inversion and afterslip models, and J. Savage for sharing the data from the principal component analysis in the Savage and Langbein26 paper. The manuscript benefited from useful comments by J.-P. Avouac, R. Bergmann, B. Enescu, H. Houston, K. Johnson, N. Kato, O. Lengline, J. Savage, D. Shelly and J. Vidale. This work is supported by the USGS NEHRP program G09AP00114.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

Z.P. designed the project; Z.P. and P.Z. carried out the data analysis; Z.P. wrote the manuscript with contributions from P.Z.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhigang Peng.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information (PDF 4678 kb)

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Movie 1 (MOV 17024 kb)

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Movie 2 (MOV 3622 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Peng, Z., Zhao, P. Migration of early aftershocks following the 2004 Parkfield earthquake. Nature Geosci 2, 877–881 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo697

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo697

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing