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Annual modulation of triggered seismicity following the 1992 Landers earthquake in California

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Abstract

The mechanism responsible for the triggering of earthquakes remains one of the least-understood aspects of the earthquake process. The magnitude-7.3 Landers, California earthquake of 28 June 1992 was followed for several weeks by triggered seismic activity over a large area, encompassing much of the western United States1. Here we show that this triggered seismicity marked the beginning of a five-year trend, consisting of an elevated microearthquake rate that was modulated by an annual cycle, decaying with time. The annual cycle is mainly associated with several hydrothermal or volcanic regions where short-term triggering was also observed. These data indicate that the Landers earthquake produced long-term physical changes in these areas, and that an environmental source of stress—plausibly barometric pressure—might be responsible for the annual variation.

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Figure 1: Map showing declustered seismicity in the western United States for the period 1 January 1988 to 1 January 1997.
Figure 2: Time series of seismicity-rate and amplitude of the annual cycle.
Figure 3: Average amplitude of annual modulation.
Figure 4: Map showing spatial distribution of excess seismicity in the second half of the years relative to the first half of the years for the post-Landers period.
Figure 5: Number of recording stations plotted as a function of earthquake magnitude for the study area.

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Acknowledgements

The earthquake catalogue was obtained from the Northern California Data Center maintained by UC Berkeley and the USGS. The code for declustering catalogues was written by P. Reasenberg. We thank the National Climatic Data Center and E. Roeloffs and E. Quilty for providing precipitation data; E. Roeloffs, D. Oppenheimer, S. Solomon, L. Knopoff, F. Press and H. Liu for discussions; and J. Gomberg for comments that significantly improved the manuscript.

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  1. Stephen S. Gao

    Present address: Department of Geology, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas, 66506, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Terrestrial Magnetism Carnegie Institution of Washington, 5241 Broad Branch Road, NW, Washington, 20015, DC, USA

    Stephen S. Gao, Paul G. Silver, Alan T. Linde & I. Selwyn Sacks

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  1. Stephen S. Gao
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  2. Paul G. Silver
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Correspondence to Stephen S. Gao.

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Gao, S., Silver, P., Linde, A. et al. Annual modulation of triggered seismicity following the 1992 Landers earthquake in California. Nature 406, 500–504 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35020045

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