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Investigating the Potential of Multisequence Displacement Timeseries for Fault Rheology Estimation
  • Tobias Köhne,
  • Rishav Mallick,
  • Mark Simons
Tobias Köhne
California Institute of Technology Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Rishav Mallick
California Institute of Technology
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Mark Simons
California Institute of Technology
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Abstract

Understanding the nature and behavior of the rocks in boundary zones between tectonic plates is important to improve our understanding of earthquake-associated hazard. Laboratory experiments can derive models that explain material behavior on small scales and under controlled conditions. These models can also be tested on observations of surface motion near plate boundaries: Fitting surface displacements from earthquakes (either shortterm offsets or longterm motion) yields estimates of rock properties for each model. However, using only observations from a single earthquake (from immediately after the quake and/or the subsequent years), may not allows us to confidently distinguish between models. In this study, we investigate the potential of using the displacement timeseries from multiple earthquakes, as well as the period between the quakes, to distinguish between proposed models. We use methods that enable comparison between models and parameters taking into account uncertainties, and perform our assessment on an artificial dataset.