Rupture Process for Hayward Microearthquakes Inferred from Borehole Seismic Recordings

Abstract:

The Hayward fault (HF) in the San Francisco Bay Area, California is one of the major strands of the San Andreas fault system, extending for about 70 km. Crustal deformation along the HF is characterized by a wide variety of fault slip behaviors from aseismic creep to stick-slip earthquake including a M_w ~6.8 earthquake in 1868. We here document the high-resolution imaging of the rupture models for the recent M 3+ HF earthquakes by making use of waveforms from the Hayward Fault Network (HFN). The HFN is an array of borehole seismic instrumentation and provides an unprecedented high-resolution coverage of the earthquake source study for HF earthquakes. Using the finite-source rupture inversion with an empirical Green’s function approach, we find a variety of rupture propagations including subevents, directivity, and high stress drop. Our finite-source modeling reveals a complex slip distribution for the 2013 M_w 3.2 Orinda earthquake that is characterized by a patch of slip with a maximum slip of 4 cm concentrated near the hypocenter at about 6.6 km depth, with a large secondary patch of slip (peak slip of 2 cm) centered up-dip and southeast from the hypocenter at a distance of about 400 m away. The two subevents release 43% and 23% of the total seismic moment (6.7 x 10¹³ N m) and the inferred peak stress drops are 18 MPa and 10 MPa. The 2011 M_w 4.0 Berkeley and 2012 M_w 4.0 El Cerrito earthquakes are marked by high stress drop. The inferred peak and mean stress drops are about 130-165 MPa and 45 MPa, respectively, which suggests that there are locally high levels of the fault strength on the HF. Our finite-source modeling suggests that the radiation efficiency determined for these two earthquakes is very low (< 0.1) and implies that majority of energy is dissipated during the earthquake rupture process.