150 Years of Coulomb Stress History Along the California-Nevada Border, USA.

Abstract:

The temporal and spatial correlation among earthquakes in diffuse plate boundary zones is not well understood yet. The region north of the Garlock fault between the Sierra Nevada and Death Valley is part of a diffuse plate boundary zone, which absorbs a significant fraction of the plate motion between Pacific and North America. This area has experienced at least eight M_w ≥ 6 earthquakes in historical times, beginning with the 1872 M_w 7.5 Owens Valley earthquake. Furthermore, since 1978 Long Valley caldera has been undergoing periods of unrest, with earthquake swarms and resurgence. Our goal is to determine whether the 1872 Owens Valley earthquake has influenced the seismicity and volcanic activity in the area. We model the evolution of coseismic, interseismic and postseismic Coulomb stress (ΔCFS) in the region due to both earthquakes and caldera activity in the last 150 years. Our results show that the 1872 Owens Valley earthquake strongly encourages faulting in northern Owens Valley. In addition, there is a correlation among smaller events, in the form of a west-to-east migration of earthquakes from Long Valley caldera toward the White Mountains immediately following the 1978 caldera inflation event. The last event in this sequence, the 1986 M_w 6.3 Chalfant Valley earthquake, controls the location of over 80% of its own aftershocks, which occur in areas of positive ΔCFS and reach M_w 5.7. We also calculate the cumulative ΔCFS on several major active faults in the region. Stresses up to 30 bars and 10 bars respectively have accumulated on the White Mountains (Central section) and Deep Springs faults, comparable to the expected stress drop in an average earthquake. Because no surface ruptures more recent than 1.8 ka have been identified on these faults [dePolo, 1989; Lee et al., 2001], we consider them as likely candidates for the next major earthquake in the region.