Changes in shear wave splitting at Anza near the time of the North Palm Springs Earthquake

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Abstract
Changes in shear wave splitting are observed at KNW before and after the M = 6 North Palm Springs earthquake of July 8, 1986. KNW is a station of the Anza seismic network monitoring the Anza seismic gap on the San Jacinto fault, southern California. The gradual increase in the delays between the split shear waves over 3 years at KNW, reported by Peacock et al. (1988), ended in June 1986. The further 2 years of observations analyzed here show that the behavior of the delays changed abruptly near the time of the North Palm Springs earthquake, 33 km north of KNW. Peacock et al. demonstrated that the increase in delays could be simulated by increasing the aspect ratio of stress‐aligned fluid‐filled inclusions, and speculated that this increase might be the result of a build up of stress before an impending earthquake. The new data appear to confirm this speculation, but the temporal variations require a more complex interpretation, although they still suggest that the changes in shear wave splitting are caused by earthquake‐induced stress changes to the fluid‐filled inclusions throughout the rockmass. Central to our interpretation of temporal changes in shear wave splitting is the well established existence, throughout at least the uppermost 10 to 20 km of the crust, of small fluid‐filled cracks, microcracks, and pores. The existence of such inclusions introduces a compliant quality to otherwise stiff crustal rock. We term these distributions of inclusions extensive dilatancy anisotropy or EDA, and the individual inclusions EDA cracks because, although they may include a wide range of shapes, many of the seismic properties can be simulated by distributions of thin parallel cracks.