The Shear Deformation Zone and the Smoothing of 10.1029/2020JB020447 Faults with Displacement Key Points: Clément Perrin1,2 , Felix Waldhauser1 , and Christopher H
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RESEARCH ARTICLE The Shear Deformation Zone and the Smoothing of 10.1029/2020JB020447 Faults With Displacement Key Points: Clément Perrin1,2 , Felix Waldhauser1 , and Christopher H. Scholz1 • Across strike distribution of aftershocks of large earthquakes 1Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY, USA, 2Laboratoire de Planétologie et describe the width of the shear Géodynamique, Observatoire des Sciences de l’Univers de Nantes Atlantique, UMR6112, UMS3281, Université de deformation zone around large faults • The zone of active shear deformation Nantes, Université d’Angers, CNRS, Nantes, France scales with fault roughness and narrows as a power law with fault displacement Abstract We use high-resolution earthquake locations to characterize the three-dimensional • Earthquake stress drop decreases structure of active faults in California and how it evolves with fault structural maturity. We investigate with fault displacement and hence fault roughness or displacement rate the distribution of aftershocks of several recent large earthquakes that occurred on continental strike slip faults of various structural maturity (i.e. various cumulative fault displacement, length, initiation age and slip rate). Aftershocks define a tabular zone of shear deformation surrounding the mainshock rupture Supporting Information: Supporting Information may be found plane. Comparing this to geological observations, we conclude that this results from the re-activation of in the online version of this article. secondary faults. We observe a rapid fall off of the number of aftershocks at a distance range of 0.06-0.22 km from the main fault surface of mature faults, and 0.6-1.0 km from the fault surface of immature faults. Correspondence to: The total width of the active shear deformation zone surrounding the main fault plane reaches 1.0-2.5 km C. Perrin, and 6-9 km for mature and immature faults, respectively. We find that the width of the shear deformation [email protected] zone decreases as a power law with cumulative fault displacement. Comparing with a dynamic rough fault model, we infer that the narrowing of the shear deformation zone agrees quantitatively with earlier Citation: estimates of the smoothing of faults with displacement, both of which are aspects of fault wear. We find Perrin, C., Waldhauser, F., & Scholz, that earthquake stress drop decreases with fault displacement and hence with increased smoothness and/ C. H. (2021). The shear deformation zone and the smoothing of faults or slip rate. This may result from fault healing or the effect of roughness on friction. with displacement. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, Plain Language Summary Active fault zones worldwide are 3D features made of a parent 126, e2020JB020447. https://doi. fault and secondary faults and fractures that damaged the surrounding medium. During and soon after a org/10.1029/2020JB020447 large earthquake, these structures are reactivated, highlighted by numerous smaller events—aftershocks. Received 22 JUN 2020 Their distribution allows us to characterize the zone of shear deformation around the fault plane. In Accepted 22 MAR 2021 this study, we show that the width of the shear deformation zone is narrower around mature faults than around immature faults. It decreases as a power law with cumulative fault displacement which we infer to be the result of the smoothing of the fault with wear through geological times. We also find that the stress drop of mainshocks decrease with fault smoothness or slip rate, both of which correlate with maturity. Our study provides some relations to better understand and anticipate the size of off-fault deformation reactivated during and after an earthquake, based on geological fault parameters. 1. Introduction A fault zone is a complex brittle-frictional system that wears as slip occurs on it. It is formed of three main features, that evolve with fault growth (Figure 1): (i) the cataclastic core contains the cataclastic detritus of wear of the slipping surfaces of the fault. Its width (WC in Figure 1) increases linearly with fault dis- placement at a rate that depends on the strength of the wall rock (Scholz, 1987, 2019). For displacements greater than a few hundred meters, growth of the fault core levels off at a thickness of a few tens of me- ters (Scholz, 2019); (ii) Beyond the fault core lies a region of pervasive tensile fracturing which defines the “dilatant damage zone” (WD, Figure 1; e.g., Faulkner et al., 2011; Savage & Brodsky, 2011; Vermilye & Scholz, 1998). The fracture density in this zone dies off as a power law with distance from the fault (e.g., Ostermeijer et al., 2020, and references therein). The dilatant damage zone width increases linearly with fault displacement, and typically levels out at several hundred meters for fault displacements exceeding several hundred meters (Savage & Brodsky, 2011); (iii) Including and extending beyond the dilatant damage zone is what we call the “shear deformation zone” (WS; Figure 1) which is defined by a region of enhanced © 2021. American Geophysical Union. seismicity, first pointed out by Powers and Jordan (2010). This zone shows a region of high seismic activity All Rights Reserved. near the fault with a power law fall-off beyond a corner at WS1 to a full half-width of WS2 (Figure 1). PERRIN ET AL. 1 of 18 Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth 10.1029/2020JB020447 The above definitions allow us to distinguish two types of damage zones: the “dilatant damage zone” dominated by volumetric strains, and the “shear deformation zone” dominated by shear strains. The tensile (Mode I) cracks in the dilatant damage zone are dilatant cracks that align paral- lel to the maximum compression direction and perpendicular to the min- imum principal stress. Hence the orientation of cracks provides evidence for the several different mechanisms responsible for their formation (Wil- son et al., 2003). The shear deformation zone is characterized by second- ary faults (Modes II and III cracks) and hence are oriented parallel to the maximum Coulomb stress. For example, in the case of a strike-slip fault, this zone is defined by a conjugate set of secondary faults (Little, 1995), in which one set is parallel to the primary fault. Figure 1. Simplified view of the architecture of a fault zone and the density of fractures (red) and seismicity (blue) away from the fault core. The evolution of these three zones in Figure 1 defines what is called fault maturity. The three zones can be viewed as regions controlled by wear processes, and the fault structural maturity can hence be measured by its degree of wear, which depends primarily on the net fault displacement, assuming a constant slip-vector throughout the fault’s history. However, previous studies have shown that, in the absence of data on net fault displacement, several other fault parameters such as the fault initiation age and the geological slip rate can be also used as a proxy of net displacement in evaluating the overall maturity of the fault (e.g., Choy et al., 2006; Choy & Kirby, 2004; Dolan & Haravitch, 2014; Hecker et al., 2010; Ikari et al., 2011; Manighetti et al., 2007; Niemeijer et al., 2010; Perrin, Manighetti, Ampuero, et al., 2016; Stirling et al., 1996; Wesnousky, 1988). As these parameters increase, the fault grows and becomes more “mature.” Prior studies have suggested that the structural maturity may have a strong impact on earthquake behavior, such as magnitude, stress drop, distribution of slip, rupture velocity, ground motion amplitude, and num- ber of ruptured segments (e.g., Cao & Aki, 1986; Dolan & Haravitch, 2014; Hecker et al., 2010; Malagnini et al., 2010; Manighetti et al., 2007; Perrin, Manighetti, Ampuero, et al., 2016; Radiguet et al., 2009; Stirling et al., 1996; Wesnousky, 1988). The widths of the fault core and dilatant damage zones saturate at fault lengths comparable to the seis- mogenic thickness, due to the switch from crack like to pulse like earthquake propagation (Ampuero & Mao, 2017). For larger faults, the evolution of fault maturity involves only changes in the shear deformation zone. In this paper, we are concerned with the scaling of large faults (i.e., which breach the brittle seismo- genic width) and their associated large earthquakes, so we are only concerned with the shear deformation zone. There is evidence that indicates that large faults become smoother with net displacement (Stirling et al., 1996; Wesnousky, 1988). This smoothing is probably the prime attribute of fault maturity. Here we show that the width of the shear deformation zone of large faults decreases with fault displacement, as a consequence of this smoothing. Precise earthquake locations can be used to image the internal structure of faults and the zone of brit- tle deformation, often at a resolution similar to field observations (e.g., Hauksson, 2010; Powers & Jor- dan, 2010; Valoroso et al., 2014). Powers and Jordan (2010) studied the association of small earthquakes with large faults in California. They found that the frequency of small earthquakes is highest in a narrow region surrounding faults and then falls off as a power law at greater distances. They modeled this behavior with a fault model with rough (fractal) topography (Dieterich & Smith, 2009), showing that such a rough fault model would produce high stresses near the fault that could account for the seismicity. The earth- quakes they used were from the interseismic period of the faults. Although stacked profiles from many fault sections show the association of seismicity with the faults, individual sections and map views, both in Powers and Jordan (2010) and Hauksson (2010) show that such a tight correlation with the fault is not typi- cal for individual fault segments, which often display a wide variability in distribution. As Hauksson (2010) observed, this variability is likely due to many factors, such as heterogeneity in lithology, the effect of nearby faults both mapped and unmapped, and fault offsets and bends.