Cascading and pulse-like ruptures during the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes in the Eastern California Shear Zone.
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Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31911581.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-13750-w and PMC identifier 6946662.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
On July 4 2019, a M<sub>w</sub> 6.5 earthquake, followed 34 h later by a M<sub>w</sub> 7.1 event, struck Searles Valley, California. These events are part of a long-lived cluster of historical earthquakes along the Eastern California Shear Zone (ECSZ) which started in 1872 and are associated with temporarily elevated strain rates. We find that the M<sub>w</sub> 6.5 event initiated on a right-lateral NW striking fault and then ruptured a left-lateral fault to the surface. This event triggered right-lateral slip during the M<sub>w</sub> 7.1 earthquake. It started as a bilateral, crack-like rupture on a segment brought closer to failure by the M<sub>w</sub> 6.5 event. The rupture evolved to pulse-like as it propagated at a relatively slow velocity (2 km/s) along a segment that was unloaded by the M<sub>w</sub> 6.5 event. It stopped abruptly at the Coso volcanic area and at the Garlock Fault and brought some neighbouring faults closer to failure.