Cascading and pulse-like ruptures during the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes in the Eastern California Shear Zone

Kejie Chen (), Jean-Philippe Avouac, Saif Aati, Chris Milliner, Fu Zheng and Chuang Shi
Additional contact information
Kejie Chen: California Institute of Technology
Jean-Philippe Avouac: California Institute of Technology
Saif Aati: California Institute of Technology
Chris Milliner: California Institute of Technology
Fu Zheng: Beihang University
Chuang Shi: Beihang University

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract On July 4 2019, a Mw 6.5 earthquake, followed 34 h later by a Mw 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 Mw 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 Mw 7.1 earthquake. It started as a bilateral, crack-like rupture on a segment brought closer to failure by the Mw 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 Mw 6.5 event. It stopped abruptly at the Coso volcanic area and at the Garlock Fault and brought some neighbouring faults closer to failure.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13750-w Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-13750-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-13750-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().