TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wang, Lifeng
A1  - Hainzl, Sebastian
A1  - Zöller, Gert
T1  - Assessment of stress coupling among the inter-, co- and post-seismic phases related to the 2004 M6 Parkfield earthquake
T2  - Geophysical journal international
N2  - Due to large uncertainties and non-uniqueness in fault slip inversion, the investigation of stress coupling based on the direct comparison of independent slip inversions, for example, between the coseismic slip distribution and the interseismic slip deficit, may lead to ambiguous conclusions. In this study, we therefore adopt the stress-constrained joint inversion in the Bayesian approach of Wang et al., and implement the physical hypothesis of stress coupling as a prior. We test the hypothesis that interseismic locking is coupled with the coseismic rupture, and the early post-seismic deformation is a stress relaxation process in response to the coseismic stress perturbation. We characterize the role of stress coupling in the seismic cycle by evaluating the efficiency of the model to explain the available data. Taking the 2004 M6 Parkfield earthquake as a study case, we find that the stress coupling hypothesis is in agreement with the data. The coseismic rupture zone is found to be strongly locked during the interseismic phase and the post-seismic slip zone is indicated to be weakly creeping. The post-seismic deformation plays an important role to rebuild stress in the coseismic rupture zone. Based on our results for the stress accumulation during both inter- and post-seismic phase in the coseismic rupture zone, together with the coseismic stress drop, we estimate a recurrence time of M6 earthquake in Parkfield around 23-41 yr, suggesting that the duration of 38 yr between the two recent M6 events in Parkfield is not a surprise.
KW  - Inverse theory
KW  - Seismic cycle
KW  - Dynamics and mechanics of faulting
Y1  - 2014
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/37811
SN  - 0956-540X
SN  - 1365-246X
VL  - 197
IS  - 3
SP  - 1858
EP  - 1868
PB  - Oxford Univ. Press
CY  - Oxford
ER  -