Stress field associated with the rupture of the 1992 Landers, California, earthquake and its implications concerning the fault strength at the onset of the earthquake

We investigate the space and time history of the shear stress produced on the fault during the 1992 Landers earthquake. The stress is directly calculated from the tomographic image of slip on the fault derived from near-source strong motion data. The results obtained shed some light on why the earthquake rupture cascaded along a series of previously distinct fault segments to produce the largest earthquake in California in over 40 years. Rupture on the 30 km long northernmost segment of the fault was triggered by a large dynamic increase of the stress field, of the order of 20 to 30 MPa, produced by the rupturing of the adjacent fault segments. Such a large increase was necessary to overcome the static friction on this strand of the fault, unfavorably oriented in today's tectonic stress field. This misorientation eventually led to the arrest of rupture. The same mechanism explains why rupture broke only a small portion of the Johnson Valley fault on which the earthquake originally started, before jumping: to an adjacent fault more favorably oriented. We conclude from these results that the dynamic stress field could not sustain and drive the rupture along the strongly misoriented NW-SE strands of the preexisting fault system. Instead, the dynamic stress field produced new fractures favorably oriented in a N-S direction and connecting parts of the old fault system.