Fault model for preseismic deformation at Parkfield, California

We construct an earthquake instability model to estimate precursory faulting and ground deformation before the next moderate (M 5.5–6) earthquake on the San Andreas fault near Parkfield, California. The quasi-static model simulates fault slip, fault shear stress, and ground deformation for all stages of repeated earthquake cycles. Unstable slip, which is the analog of a moderate Parkfield mainshock, is caused by overall failure of a postulated strong area or patch of the fault zone. The brittle patch and surrounding weaker viscous fault are defined by the sign of a spatially varying coefficient of a slip rate dependent fault law. Stable failure of the patch leading up to mainshock failure causes slip rate to increase at depth. Amplitudes and timescales of the resulting preseismic deformation anomalies are found for the current earthquake cycle at Parkfield, starting just after the 1966 mainshock, in two ways. In the first way we vary parameter values in a sequence of simulations so as to find the simulation giving best agreement with locations, moments, and recurrence times of past moderate earthquakes and also with fault creep and trilateration line length changes since the 1966 mainshock. In the second way we assign values of most parameters from laboratory friction experiments and a temperature-depth profile inferred from heat flow data. Overall agreement between model results and observations is comparable for the two methods. In all simulations, preseismic deformation anomalies arise from slip rate increase near the model earthquake focus and start several years or less before instability. Preseismic anomalies in surface fault creep and line length are always too small to detect in current measurements. However, for some simulations constrained mainly by field data the predicted anomalies in borehole dilatation are large enough to detect.