HR: 1340h
AN: S53A-1088    [Abstracts]
TI: Forecasting the Next Great San Francisco Earthquake
AU: * Rundle, P
EM: prundle@cse.ucdavis.edu
AF: University of California, Center for Computational Physics, Davis, CA 95616 United States
AU: Rundle, J B
EM: jbrundle@ucdavis.edu
AF: University of California, Center for Computational Physics, Davis, CA 95616 United States
AU: Turcotte, D L
EM: turcotte@geology.ucdavis.edu
AF: University of California, Dept. of Geology, Davis, CA 95616 United States
AU: Donnellan, A
EM: andrea.donnellan@jpl.nasa.gov
AF: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Earth and Space Science Division, Pasadena, CA 91125 United States
AU: Yakovlev, G
EM: gleb@cse.ucdavis.edu
AF: University of California, Center for Computational Physics, Davis, CA 95616 United States
AU: Tiampo, K F
EM: kftiampo@uwa.edu.ca
AF: University of Western Ontario, Dept of Earth Science, London, ON N6A5B7 Canada
AB: The great San Francisco earthquake of 18 April 1906 and its subsequent fires killed more than 3,000 persons, and destroyed much of the city leaving 225,000 out of 400,000 inhabitants homeless. The 1906 earthquake occurred on a km segment of the San Andreas fault that runs from the San Juan Bautista north to Cape Mendocino and is estimated to have had a moment magnitude m ,l 7.9. Observations of surface displacements across the fault were in the range m. As we approach the 100 year anniversary of this event, a critical concern is the hazard posed by another such earthquake. In this talk we examine the assumptions presently used to compute the probability of occurrence of these earthquakes. We also present the results of a numerical simulation of interacting faults on the San Andreas system. Called Virtual California, this simulation can be used to compute the times, locations and magnitudes of simulated earthquakes on the San Andreas fault in the vicinity of San Francisco. Of particular importance are new results for the statistical distribution of interval times between great earthquakes, results that are difficult or impossible to obtain from a purely field-based approach. We find that our results are fit well under most circumstances by the Weibull statistical distribution, and we compute waiting times to future earthquakes based upon our simulation results. A contrasting approach to the same problem has been adopted by the Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities, who use observational data combined with statistical assumptions to compute probabilities of future earthquakes.
DE: 0545 Modeling (4255)
DE: 3245 Probabilistic forecasting (3238)
DE: 4435 Emergent phenomena
DE: 4460 Pattern formation
DE: 4485 Self-organization
SC: Seismology [S]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005