Source characteristics of earthquakes along the southern San Jacinto and Imperial fault zones (1937 to 1954)

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Abstract
Body waveform inversion techniques are used to study the source parameters of four earthquakes occurring between 1937 and 1954 along the southern San Jacinto and Imperial faults (1937 Buck Ridge, 1940 Imperial Valley, 1942 Borrego Mountain, and 1954 Salada Wash events). All earthquakes had simple rupture histories with the exception of the 1940 Imperial Valley main shock, which consisted of at least four subevents whose relative locations indicate unilateral rupture toward the southeast. Earthquakes in regions of high heat flow (>80 mW/m2) had focal depths near the base of the seismogenic zone (8 to 10 km). The 1937 Buck Ridge earthquake, located in a region of lower heat flow, however, appears to have occurred at a shallow (3 ± 2 km) depth. The location, mechanism, and aftershock distribution for the 1942 Borrego Mountain earthquake suggest it could have occurred along the Split Mountain fault, a recently identified northeast-trending cross fault located between the Elsinore and Coyote Creek faults or along an unnamed fault that parallels the trend of the Coyote Creek fault. Moment and rupture length estimates obtained from this study agree well with estimates obtained in previous studies that used different data sets.