Abstract
Variations in fault maturity have intermittently been invoked to explain
variations in some seismological observations for large earthquakes.
However, the lack of a unified geological definition of fault maturity
makes quantitative assessment of its importance difficult. We evaluate
the degree of empirical correlation between field measurements
indicative of fault zone maturity and remotely measured seismological
source parameters of 34 large shallow strike-slip events. Metrics based
on fault segmentation, such as number of primary rupture segments and
surface rupture azimuth, correlate best with seismic source attributes
and the correlations with cumulative fault slip are somewhat weaker.
Average rupture velocity shows the strongest correlation with metrics of
maturity, followed by relative aftershock productivity. Mature faults
have relatively lower aftershock productivity and higher rupture
velocity. A more complex relation is found with moment-scaled radiated
energy. There appears to be distinct behavior of very immature events
with no prior mapped fault and < 1 km cumulative slip, which
radiate modest seismic energy, while moderately mature faults have
events with higher moment-scaled radiated energy and very mature faults
with increasing cumulative slip tend to have events with reducing
moment-scaled radiated energy. We also explore qualitative and composite
assessments of maturity and arrive at similar trends. This empirical
approach establishes that there are relationships between remote
seismological observations and fault system maturity that can help to
understand variations in seismic hazard among different fault
environments and to assess the relative maturity of blind fault systems
for which direct observations of maturity are very limited.