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Seismological Studies of the Hayward Fault: Jeanne Hardebeck
Project Title: Seismological Studies of the Hayward Fault
Mendenhall Fellow: Jeanne Hardebeck, (650) 329-4711, jhardebeck@usgs.gov
Duty Station: Menlo Park, California
Start Date: February 15, 2003
Education: Ph.D. (Geophysics), California Institute of Technology, 2001
Research Advisor: Andrew Michael, michael@usgs.gov
Project Description: The Hayward Fault is considered the most likely fault in the San Francisco Bay Area to have a major earthquake in the next 30 years, and it runs through the major urban areas of the East Bay, posing a serious earthquake risk to more than 2 million people.   In order to accurately evaluate the probability of various earthquake scenarios for this fault, it is important to understand its structure and physical properties.  The focus of research under this project includesconstructing a new 3D seismic velocity model for the region, along with relocated earthquake hypocenters and improved focal mechanisms, which are being used to study the geometry and kinematics of the Hayward Fault at depth.  For example, prior focal mechanism work has indicated very heterogeneous fault structure at depth at some locations along the Hayward Fault, which has been interpreted in terms of potential segment boundaries for large earthquakes.  Preliminary focal mechanism results suggest a more simple fault structure, which has important implications for the assumed fault segmentation in earthquake probability calculations.   Additionally, the relocated earthquakes and focal mechanisms information is being used to study stress interactions between small earthquakes, and the relationship between seismicity and creep on the Hayward Fault.
Preliminary P-wave seismic velocity structure and earthquake locations in the region of the Hayward Fault

Figure 1. Preliminary P-wave seismic velocity structure and earthquake
locations in the region of the Hayward Fault.

[VIEW a high-quality PDF file]
reliminary focal mechanisms for earthquakes along the Hayward Fault. Figure 2. Preliminary focal mechanisms for earthquakes along the Hayward Fault.
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