Fluid-faulting interactions: Fracture-mesh and fault-valve behavior in the February 2014 Mammoth Mountain, California, earthquake swarm
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Abstract
Faulting and fluid transport in the subsurface are highly coupled processes, which may manifest seismically as earthquake swarms. A swarm in February 2014 beneath densely monitored Mammoth Mountain, California, provides an opportunity to witness these interactions in high resolution. Toward this goal, we employ massive waveform-correlation-based event detection and relative relocation, which quadruples the swarm catalog to more than 6000 earthquakes and produces high-precision locations even for very small events. The swarm's main seismic zone forms a distributed fracture mesh, with individual faults activated in short earthquake bursts. The largest event of the sequence, M 3.1, apparently acted as a fault valve and was followed by a distinct wave of earthquakes propagating ~1 km westward from the updip edge of rupture, 1–2 h later. Late in the swarm, multiple small, shallower subsidiary faults activated with pronounced hypocenter migration, suggesting that a broader fluid pressure pulse propagated through the subsurface.
Study Area
| Publication type | Article |
|---|---|
| Publication Subtype | Journal Article |
| Title | Fluid-faulting interactions: Fracture-mesh and fault-valve behavior in the February 2014 Mammoth Mountain, California, earthquake swarm |
| Series title | Geophysical Research Letters |
| DOI | 10.1002/2015GL064325 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 14 |
| Year Published | 2015 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | American Geophysical Union |
| Contributing office(s) | Volcano Science Center |
| Description | 10 p. |
| First page | 5803 |
| Last page | 5812 |
| Country | United States |
| State | California |
| Other Geospatial | Mammoth Mountain |
| Google Analytic Metrics | Metrics page |