The horse canyon earthquake of August 2, 1975—Two-stage stress-release process in a strike-slip earthquake

abstract A moderate strike-slip earthquake (ML = 4.8) occurred on the San Jacinto fault system about 60 km northwest of the Salton Sea on August 2, 1975. Analysis of main shock and aftershock data suggest that stress release during this earthquake took place in two stages. During one stage faulting occurred over a relatively small source area (source radius of ∼0.5 km), with a rapid dislocaton rate (rise time ∼0.1 sec), possibly associated with an asperity on the fault. During the second stage of faulting, the rupture front grew, but at a much slower rate (rise time ∼10 sec), to a final source radius of ∼1.0 km. The above model explains the larger moment estimate based on 20-sec surface waves compared to shorter period body-wave estimates, and also the apparent increase in source dimension with time. The model allows for large stress drops over small source dimensions, but when averaged over the final extent of the rupture plane, stress drops are much lower. The rupture of the asperity is characterized by a moment of 6.5 × 1022 dyne-cm and a stress drop of about 225 bars. The total moment is about 3.0 × 1023 dyne-cm with an averaged stress drop over the fault plane of approximately 90 bars and a dislocation of 25 cm. Observations similar to the ones reported on here have been noted for other earthquakes with a wide range of magnitudes, including: a few large earthquakes in Japan, the 1971 San Fernando earthquake and some of its aftershocks, the 1975 Oroville earthquake, and some swarm events in the Imperial Valley. These observations suggest that a two-stage rupture mechanism may be a fairly common occurrence in shallow faulting and may reflect possible large variations in stress over a length scale of kilometers within the crust.