A spatial forecast of some M_W≥6.5 earthquakes in California and Nevada

Abstract

This paper presents a prospective forecast of the locations of the next M_W ≥ 6.5 earthquakes in California and Nevada based on the locations and rates of occurrence of M ≥ 4.0 earthquakes during the past 30 years, called here preshocks. The time period of the forecast is arbitrarily set at 33 years. The forecast faults are the Anza section of the San Jacinto Fault, the Calaveras Fault, the creeping section of the San Andreas Fault, the Maacama Fault, the San Bernardino section of the San Jacinto Fault, and the southern San Andreas Fault, all strike-slip faults in California, and the normal-faulting Wassuk Range Fault in Nevada. The suspected preshocks have occurred randomly along the expected future fault ruptures at rates of at least 0.5 events per year. The temporal history of preshocks for past M ≥ 6.5 earthquakes in California do not indicate when the future mainshock will occur. Outside of California, preshock activity was observed before the 2016 M_W 7.0 Kumamoto, Japan earthquake, the 2023 M_W 7.8 Kahramanmaras, Turkey earthquake, and the 2017 M_W 6.5 Jiuzhaigou, China earthquake, all strike-slip events, as well as the 2008 M_W 7.9 Wenchuan, China thrust earthquake. The two mainshocks in China had preshock rates less than 0.5 events per year. By publishing this spatial earthquake forecast, seismologists in the future can evaluate whether or not this forecast was a total success, a total failure, or a partial success. The probability of just one of the forecast events actually taking place during the forecast time period is less than 2%.

Keywords

Earthquake forecasting / California and Nevada seismicity / Preshocks / Postshocks / Strike-slip faults / Normal faults

Data and Resources

Several on-line earthquake catalogs were utilized for this study: the Comcat catalog for California and Nevada (https://earthquake.usgs.gov); the AFAD earthquake catalog for Turkey (https://deprem.afad.gov.tr/event-catalog); and the ISC Bulletin catalog search for earth-quakes in Japan (http://www.isc.ac.uk/iscbulletin/search/catalogue/). The earthquake catalog for China was provided by Dr. Yongxian Zhang of the Insititute of Earthquake Forecasting, China Earthquake Administra-tion. Information on the faults in California came from the U.S. Geolog-ical Survey active fault database (https://www.usgs.gov/programs/earthquake-hazards/faults).

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Author Agreement and Acknowledgments

This author of this paper affirms that he created this work himself without any AI-generated material and that he authorizes the final draft of the presented manuscript. He also verifies that this is an original piece of work that he created, that has been not been published previously, and that is not being considered elsewhere for publication.

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