Berkeley Report 7/9/09 Says Tremors Unlocking San Andreas - Big Quake Possible

There have been ongoing tremors on the southern end of the San Andreas fault which the Berkeley people feel is unlocking the fault there - which then can produce a very large 7.0 or greater earthquake.

link to article: www.berkeley.edu...

Seismologist Robert M. Nadeau and graduate student Aurélie Guilhem of UC Berkeley draw these conclusions from a study of tremors along a heavily instrumented segment of the San Andreas Fault near Parkfield, Calif. The research is reported in the July 10 issue of Science.

They found that after the 6.5-magnitude San Simeon quake in 2003 and the 6.0-magnitude Parkfield quake in 2004, underground stress increased at the end of a locked segment of the San Andreas Fault near Cholame, Calif., at the same time as tremors became more frequent. The tremors have continued to this day at a rate significantly higher than the rate before the two quakes.

The researchers conclude that the increased rate of tremors may indicate that stress is accumulating more rapidly than in the past along this segment of the San Andreas Fault, which is at risk of breaking like it did in 1857 to produce the great 7.8 magnitude Fort Tejon earthquake. Strong quakes have also occurred just to the northwest along the Parkfield segment of the San Andreas about every 20 to 30 years.

They looked at the history and the ongoing tremors and where they are happening.

Because in nearly all known instances the tremors originate from the edge of a locked zone – a segment of a fault that hasn't moved in years and is at high risk of a major earthquake – seismologists have thought that increases in their activity may forewarn of stress build-up just before an earthquake.

For the new study, Nadeau and Guilhem pinpointed the location of nearly 2,200 tremors recorded between 2001 and 2009 by borehole seismometers implanted along the San Andreas Fault as part of UC Berkeley's High-Resolution Seismic Network. During this period, two nearby earthquakes occurred: one in San Simeon, 60 kilometers from Parkfield, on Dec. 22, 2003, and one in Parkfield on the San Andreas Fault on Sept. 28, 2004.

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Before the San Simeon quake, tremor activity was low beneath the Parkfield and Cholame segments of the San Andreas Fault, but it doubled in frequency afterward and was six times more frequent after the Parkfield quake. Most of the activity occurred along a 25-kilometer (16-mile) segment of the San Andreas Fault south of Parkfield, around the town of Cholame. Fewer than 10 percent of the tremors occurred at an equal distance above Parkfield, near Monarch Peak. While Cholame is at the northern end of a long-locked and hazardous segment of the San Andreas Fault, Monarch Peak is not. However, Nadeau noted, Monarch Peak is an area of relative complexity on the San Andreas Fault and also ruptured in 1857 in the Fort Tejon 7.8 earthquake.

The tremor activity remains about twice as high today as before the San Simeon quake, while periodic peaks of activity have emerged that started to repeat about every 50 days and are now repeating about every 100-110 days.

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"What's surprising is that the activity has not gone down to its old level," Nadeau said. The continued activity is worrisome because of the history of major quakes along this segment of the fault, and the long-ago Fort Tejon quake, which ruptured southward from Monarch Peak along 350 kilometers (220 miles) of the San Andreas Fault.

A flurry of pre-tremors was detected a few days before the Parkfield quake, which makes Nadeau hopeful of seeing similar tremors preceding future quakes.

He noted that the source of tremors is still somewhat of a mystery. Some scientists think fluids moving underground generate the tremors, just as movement of underground magma, water and gas causes volcanic tremors. Nadeau leans more toward an alternative theory, that non-volcanic tremors are generated in a deep region of hot soft rock, somewhat like Silly Putty, that, except for a few hard rocks embedded like peanut brittle, normally flows without generating earthquakes. The fracturing of the brittle inclusions, however, may be generating swarms of many small quakes that combine into a faint rumble.

There has been lots of swarms in the southern area - there are also other threads which have discussed a possible great quake along the area. Including when a town issued a warning of a possible quake to it's residents. I am not inserting those - because I had done a few of the threads and I don't want to seem - like I am pushing those threads.

ALSO - BEFORE anyone starts that I am doing a "doom and gloom" thread - I am simply PASSING INFORMATION along from a SCIENCE STUDY! I DID NOT create this information. But I do WATCH this type information all the time.

So - this is NOT from me - it is from a seismologist etc.

"If tremors are composed of a lot of little earthquakes, each should have a primary and secondary wave just like large quakes," but they would overlap and produce a rumble, said Guilhem.

The stimulation of tremors by shear (tearing) stress rather than by compressional (opening and closing) stress is more consistent with deformation in the fault zone than with underground fluid movement, Nadeau said. The researchers' mapping of the underground tremors also shows that the tremors are not restricted to the plane of the fault, suggesting that faults spread out as they dive into the deeper crust.

Whatever their cause, tremors "are not relieving a lot of stress or making the fault less hazardous, they just indicate a changes in stress next to locked faults," said Nadeau.

Seismologists around the world are searching for tremors along other fault systems, Guilhem noted, although tremors can be hard to detect because of noise from oceans as well as from civilization. Brief tremor activity has been observed on a few faults, triggered by huge quakes far away, and these may be areas to focus on. Tremors were triggered on Northern California's Calaveras Fault by Alaska's Denali quake of 2002, Nadeau said.

The work is supported by the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Science Foundation.

Sorry I won't be able to contribute to this thread over the weekend - but will catch up next week.

There does seem to be more and more information and evidence supporting the fact that the San Andreas may produce a very large quake in the not too distant future.

This is nothing new...

They've been predicting a big quake on the San Andreas for over 10 years now at least this time though you're using science to pass on interesting information instead of hokey web-bot predictions. (we never did get that massive earthquake predicted by the little botlings of doom)

the area involved is probably the least populated portion of cal.


It would shake some small communities but there areent any big cities nearby.
In the 83 coalinga quake 6.5 the only major damage was in coalinga itself.