Near-Field Investigations of the Landers Earthquake Sequence, April to July 1992

Document Type

Article

Department or Administrative Unit

Geological Sciences

Publication Date

4-9-1993

Abstract

The Landers earthquake, which had a moment magnitude (Mw) of 7.3, was the largest earthquake to strike the contiguous United States in 40 years. This earthquake resulted from the rupture of five major and many minor right-lateral faults near the southern end of the eastern California shear zone, just north of the San Andreas fault. Its Mw 6.1 preshock and Mw 6.2 aftershock had their own aftershocks and foreshocks. Surficial geological observations are consistent with local and far-field seismologic observations of the earthquake. Large surficial offsets (as great as 6 meters) and a relatively short rupture length (85 kilometers) are consistent with seismological calculations of a high stress drop (200 bars), which is in turn consistent with an apparently long recurrence interval for these faults.

Comments

This article was originally published in Science. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.

Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download from ScholarWorks @ CWU.

Journal

​Science

Rights

© 1993 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science

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