Unified Viscoelastic Models of Earthquake Cycles

Abstract

Geodetic observations from before and after large earthquakes represent the opportunity to develop unified models of earthquake cycle physics that are constrained by observations that span the earthquake cycle. This thesis includes the development of integrated viscoelastic models across strike-slip faults in Tibet and Turkey, with a particular focus on the implications of these models for earthquake triggering, time-dependent stress transfer, and the potential biases in fault slip rate estimates due to time-dependent earthquake cycle effects. In addition, in a more theoretical approach, viscoelastic models of stress evolution through the earthquake cycle are linked to plate tectonics. Finally, we enable large-scale viscoelastic calculations and gain insight into viscoelastic physics using artificial neural networks. The underlying motivation of all of this work is to construct more complete representations of earthquake cycle physics in order to improve seismic hazard estimates around the world.