Project Abstract
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Studies under this project continue our investigations on the coupled evolution of faults, earthquakes and related deformation fields in a rheologically layered model of the lithosphere. The basic questions we ask are how do localized and distributed zones of damaged rocks form and evolve in the brittle upper curst over many thousands of earthquake failure episodes, and how does the evolution of a regional network of fault zones changes in turn the properties of seismicity patterns and aseismic deformation fields? Our last year studies focused on the following three research directions: (1) Understanding the spatio-temporal evolution of damage zones associated with large strike-slip structures, including the depth distribution of on- and off-fault damage, evolving geometrical properties with cumulative slip, and coupling to the ductile substrate. (2) Inferring from observed ratios of aftershock productivities and theoretical damage rheology results the degree of seismic coupling in different regions of southern California. (3) Developing a model realization that can be used to study couple evolution of fault zone structures and deformation fields in the Mojave block of southern CA. The results from the first research direction led to 1 paper in press and another submitted papers, the results from the second direction led to 1 paper in press, and the studies on the third research direction are still in progress. Below we summarize the main results from the completed studies. |
