Deep crustal heterogeneity along and around the San Andreas fault system in central California and its relation to the segmentation

The three‐dimensional distribution of scatterers in the crust along and around the San Andreas fault system in central California is estimated using an inversion analysis of coda envelopes from local earthquakes. I analyzed 3801 wave traces from 157 events recorded at 140 stations of the Northern California Seismic Network. The resulting scatterer distribution shows a correlation with the San Gregorio, San Andreas, Hayward, and Calaveras faults. These faults seem to be almost vertical from the surface to ∼15 km depth. Some of the other scatterers are estimated to be at shallow depths, 0–5 km, below the Diablo Range, and these may be interpreted as being generated by topographic roughness. The depth distribution of scatterers shows relatively stronger scattering in the lower crust, at ∼15–25 km depth, especially between the San Andreas fault and the Hayward‐Calaveras faults. This suggests a subhorizontal detachment structure connecting these two faults in the lower crust. Several clusters of scatterers are located along the San Andreas fault at intervals of ∼20–30 km from south of San Francisco to the intersection with the Calaveras fault. This part of the San Andreas fault appears to consist of partially locked segments, also ∼20–30 km long, which rupture during M6–7 events, and segment boundaries characterized by stronger scattering and stationary microseismicity. The segment boundaries delineated by the present analysis correspond with those estimated from the slip distribution of the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and from the fault geometry as reported by the Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities [1990], although the segment boundaries along the San Andreas fault in and around the San Francisco Bay area are still uncertain.