Fault Friction Derived From Fault Bend Influence on Coseismic Slip During the 2019 Ridgecrest Mw 7.1 Mainshock.

The variation of stress on faults is important for our understanding of fault friction and the dynamics of earthquake ruptures. However, we still have little observational constraints on their absolute magnitude, or their variations in space and in time over the seismic cycle. Here we use a new geodetic imaging technique to measure the 3D coseismic slip vectors along the 2019 Ridgecrest surface ruptures and invert them for the coseismic stress state. We find that the coseismic stresses show an eastward rotation that becomes increasingly transtensional from south‐to‐north along the rupture, that matches the known background stress state. We find that the main fault near the Mw 7.1 mainshock hypocenter was critically stressed. Coseismic slip was maximum there and decreased gradually along strike as the fault became less optimally oriented due its curved geometry. The variations of slip and stress along the curved faults are used to infer the static and dynamic fault friction assuming Mohr‐Coulomb failure. We find shear stresses of 4–9 MPa in the shallow crust (∼1.3 km depth) and that fault friction drops from a static, Byerlee‐type, value of 0.61 ± $\pm $ 0.14 to a dynamic value of 0.29 ± $\pm $ 0.04 during seismic slip. These values explain quantitatively the slip variations along a transpressional fault bend. Plain Language Summary: Understanding the orientation and magnitude of stresses within the crust are important because they can affect the location, size and spatial extent of earthquake rupture. However, measuring the absolute magnitude and orientation of stresses as well as the frictional properties of the fault surface (i.e., how strongly the fault resists the applied driving forces) is very difficult. Here we use optical images acquired by satellites to measure how the surface deformed in 3D during the 2019 Ridgecrest event. These 3D measurements allow us to extract the direction of fault slip movement along the entire rupture length which we use to estimate the direction of stresses by assuming the shear stress is parallel to the direction of the observed fault slip motion. We find that the main fault near the mainshock epicenter was the most optimally aligned for failure, which could be one contributing reason for the location of rupture initiation. By deriving a relation between how much a fault slips with how well aligned it is to the stress field we can estimate the absolute magnitude of stresses, the frictional resistance at initial fault sliding (finding a static friction = 0.61) and during sliding (a dynamic friction = 0.29). Key Points: Inverting surface coseismic slip vectors show a variable stress state that matches the background stresses constrained by seismicityFaults at the mainshock epicenter were the most critically stressed; we find slip increases linearly as faults become more optimally alignedWe find absolute stress magnitudes of 8–26 MPa in the upper crust, a static frictional coefficient of 0.61 and a dynamic value of 0.29 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]