Seismo Lab Seminar

Fault creep – slow, aseismic movements of faults in the absence of large earthquakes – is an unusual behaviour displayed by a handful of faults worldwide. As it reduces strain accumulation, and suppresses rapid fault slip, creep can reduce the hazard posed by an active fault, which motivates attempts to understand the phenomenon. Its apparent scarcity remains a mystery, however. Is it truly rare, or just hard to detect?

I will address this question using InSAR and repeating earthquake data from the faults of northern California and elsewhere. Using modern satellites and algorithmic improvements, it seems the answer may be a bit of both – there is probably more creep occurring than we could previously detect, but it might be associated with lithologies that only occur in certain regions.