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Published April 9, 1993 | public
Journal Article

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

Abstract

The Landers earthquake, which had a moment magnitude (M_w) 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 M_w 6.1 preshock and M_w 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.

Additional Information

© 1993 American Association for the Advancement of Science. We thank D. Agnew, A. Densmore, J. Dolan, K. Gross, D. Jackson, S. Larsen, M. Lisowski, M. Rymer, Z. Shen, and J. Svarc for helpful discussions and assistance. We also thank the seismic analysts of the Southern California Seismographic Network who have processed the Landers earthquake data, including R. Dollar, R. Geary, D. Given, W. Huston, S. Perry-Huston, R. Robb, and L. Wald. Data collection and processing partially supported by the Caltech Earthquake Research Affiliates Emergency Earthquake Fund and by the Southern California Earthquake Center (contribution number 25), which is funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Geological Survey. Additional support from Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology (contribution number 5217).

Additional details

Created:
August 20, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023