Response of Long Valley Caldera to the Mw = 7.3 Landers, California, Earthquake

Abstract

Of the many sites in the western United States responding to the June 28, 1992, Landers earthquake (Mw = 7.3) with remotely triggered seismicity, only Long Valley caldera is monitored by both seismic and continuous deformation networks. A transient strain pulse and surge in seismicity recorded by these networks began within tens of seconds following arrival of the shear pulse from Landers. The cumulative strain and number of triggered earthquakes followed the same exponentially decaying growth rate (time constant 1.8 days) during the first 6 days following Landers. The strain transient, which was recorded on a borehole dilatometer at the west margin of the caldera and a long‐base tiltmeter 20 km to the east, peaked on the sixth day at ≈0.25 ppm and gradually decayed over the next 15–20 days. The absence of a clear strain signal exceeding 0.4 ppm in data from the two‐color geodimeter deformation lines, which span the central section of the caldera, indicates that the strain transient cannot be due solely to pressure changes in the concentrated pressure source 7 km beneath the central part of the caldera that accounts for most of the uplift of the resurgent dome since 1980. The triggered seismicity occupied the entire seismogenic volume beneath the caldera. The focal mechanisms, the frequency‐magnitude distribution, and the spatial distribution of the triggered earthquakes are typical of other swarms in Long Valley caldera. The cumulative seismic moment of the triggered earthquakes through the first 2 weeks after the Landers earthquake corresponds to a single M = 3.8 earthquake, which is too small by nearly 2 orders of magnitude to account for the 0.25‐ppm peak amplitude of the observed strain transients. Evidently, the strain transient represents the dominant response mode, which precludes direct triggering of local earthquakes by the large dynamic stresses from Landers as the dominant process. Conditionally viable models for the triggering process beneath the caldera include (1) the transient pressurization of magma bodies beneath the resurgent dome and Mammoth Mountain by the advective overpressure of rising bubbles, (2) a surge in fluid pressure within the seismogenic zone due to upward cascading failure of isolated compartments containing superhydrostatic pore fluids, (3) relaxation (fluidization) of a partially crystallized magma body or dike intrusion in the deep crustal roots of Long Valley magmatic system, or (4) aseismic slip on midcrustal faults. Either the deep, relaxing‐magma body or lower crustal dike intrusion satisfy all the strain observations with a single deformation source. The latter model admits the possibility that large, regional earthquakes can trigger the episodic recharge of the deep roots of crustal magmatic systems.