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Characterization of the San Andreas Fault by Fault-Zone Trapped Waves at Seismic Experiment Site, Parkfield, California: A Review

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Abstract

The San Andreas Fault (SAF) at Parkfield, California has been taken as a seismic experimental site since the 1970s. The San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) measured a ~200-m-wide damage zone with a seismic velocity reduction of ~25–30% within the mature SAF at ~3 km depth. Observations and 3-D finite-difference simulations of fault-zone trapped waves (FZTWs) recorded in a sequence of seismic experiments conducted at the Parkfield SAF characterized a low-velocity waveguide in the SAF, likely extending from the surface to ~7-km depth with a width taper from ~200 m to ~100 m, within which seismic wave velocities are reduced by 20–40% and Q is 15–50. The FZTW data recorded before and after the 2004 M6 Parkfield earthquake show that the SAF co-seismically weakened with seismic wave velocities reduced by ~2.5% and consequently healed with seismic velocity recovery by ~1.25% within approximate three months after the mainshock. This chapter is a retrospective review of the results from our previous experiments at the Parkfield SAF, California, we expect that it will be valuable for researchers who are carrying out seismic experiments at the active faults to develop the community models of seismic wave velocity, fault structure and earthquake forecasting in the China Seismic Experimental Site (CSES) and global earthquake regions.

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Acknowledgements

The scientific experiments carried out at the San Andreas Fault at Parkfield, California and reviewed in this article were supported by multiple grants of the U.S. National Science Foundation and Geological Survey, and the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) in the past decades. SCEC is funded by NSF and USGS Cooperative Agreements. The author thanks many researchers and graduate students from multiple institutions for their collaborations and joining in this long-tern research project and field experiments, including the late Professor Keiiti. Aki, P. Malin, W. Ellsworth, C. Thurber, M. Zoback, S. Hickman, J. Vidale, C. Marone, W.H.K. Lee, E. Cochran, P. Chen, D. Adams, F. Xu, T. Burdette, K. Gross, M. Alvarez, S. Roecker, M. Rymer, R. Catchings, A. Snyder, R. Russell, L. Powell, B. Nadeau, N. Boness, and D. McPhee. Special thanks to SAFOD PIs for their coordination of our experiments to seismically characterize the SAFOD drill site, and to the IRIS for the use of PASSCAL instruments.

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  1. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA

    Yong-Gang Li

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  1. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Yong-Gang Li

  2. Institute of Earthquake Forecasting, China Earthquake Administration, Bei**g, China

    Yongxian Zhang

  3. Institute of Earthquake Forecasting, China Earthquake Administration, Bei**g, China

    Zhongliang Wu

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Li, YG. (2022). Characterization of the San Andreas Fault by Fault-Zone Trapped Waves at Seismic Experiment Site, Parkfield, California: A Review. In: Li, YG., Zhang, Y., Wu, Z. (eds) China Seismic Experimental Site . Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8607-8_11

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