Jeanne Hardebeck

The three largest recent great subduction zone earthquakes (2011 M9.0 Tohoku, Japan; 2010 M8.8 Maule, Chile; and 2004 M9.2 Sumatra-Andaman) exhibit similar coseismic rotations of the principal stress axes. Prior to each mainshock, the maximum compressive stress axis was shallowly plunging, while immediately after the mainshock, both the maximum and minimum compressive stress axes plunge at ~45°. D

Parkfield's regularly occurring M6 mainshocks, about every 25 years, have over two decades stoked seismologists' hopes to successfully predict an earthquake of significant size. However, with the longest known inter-event time of 38 years, the latest M6 in the series (28 Sep 2004) did not conform to any of the applied forecast models, questioning once more the predictability of earthquakes in gene

The 2003 M 6.5 San Simeon, California, earthquake caused significant damage in the city of Paso Robles and a persistent cluster of aftershocks close to Paso Robles near the Rinconada fault. Given the importance of secondary aftershock triggering in sequences of large events, a concern is whether this cluster of events could trigger another damaging earthquake near Paso Robles. An epidemic‐type aft

It has been proposed that the crustal stress field contains small-length-scale heterogeneity of much larger amplitude than the uniform background stress. This model predicts that earthquake focal mechanisms should reflect the loading stress rather than the uniform background stress. So, if the heterogeneous stress hypothesis is correct, focal mechanisms before and after a large earthquake should a

We precisely locate 88 tremor families along the central San Andreas Fault using a 3D velocity model and numerous P and S wave arrival times estimated from seismogram stacks of up to 400 events per tremor family. Maximum tremor amplitudes vary along the fault by at least a factor of 7, with by far the strongest sources along a 25 km section of the fault southeast of Parkfield. We also identify man

I present and interpret new earthquake relocations and focal mechanisms for the California Central Coast. The relocations improve upon catalog locations by using 3D seismic velocity models to account for lateral variations in structure and by using relative arrival times from waveform cross-correlation and double-difference methods to image seismicity features more sharply. Focal mechanisms are co

We obtain a seismic velocity model of the California crust and uppermost mantle using a regional-scale double-difference tomography algorithm. We begin by using absolute arrival-time picks to solve for a coarse three-dimensional (3D) P velocity (VP) model with a uniform 30 km horizontal node spacing, which we then use as the starting model for a finer-scale inversion using double-difference tomogr

We study variations in earthquake stress drop with respect to depth, faulting regime, creeping versus locked fault behavior, and wall-rock geology. We use the P-wave displacement spectra from borehole seismic recordings of M 1.0-4.2 earthquakes in the east San Francisco Bay to estimate stress drop using a stack-and-invert empirical Green's function method. The median stress drop is 8.7 MPa, and mo

We report on a time-dependent seismic hazard analysis for Alaska and the Aleutians to complement our recently completed time-independent map. Whereas the time-independent map treats all sources as statistically independent, the time-dependent analysis is based on calculations of the conditional probability of occurrence for the next 50 years by using a Brownian Passage Time model for the seismic s

We use data from two seismic networks and satellite interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) imagery to characterize the 22 December 2003 Mw 6.5 San Simeon earthquake sequence. Absolute locations for the mainshock and nearly 10,000 aftershocks were determined using a new three-dimensional (3D) seismic velocity model; relative locations were obtained using double difference. The mainshock l

The Hayward Fault System is considered the most likely fault system in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, to produce a major earthquake in the next 30 years. To better understand this fault system, we use microseismicity to study its structure and kinematics. We present a new 3D seismic-velocity model for the eastern San Francisco Bay region, using microseismicity and controlled sources, whic

We present a new focal mechanism stress inversion technique to produce regional-scale models of stress orientation containing the minimum complexity necessary to fit the data. Current practice is to divide a region into small subareas and to independently fit a stress tensor to the focal mechanisms of each subarea. This procedure may lead to apparent spatial variability that is actually an artifac