Friction as a Factor Determining the Radiation Efficiency of Fault Slips and the Possibility of Their Initiation: State of the Art.

Abstract—A conceptual state of the art review of the research on fault zone resistance to shear is presented. Recent works are analyzed in the context of the approaches formulated in the authors' presentations made at the Sixth Conference "Triggering Effects in Geosystems." The analysis of the results obtained in the last two or three decades by different research teams shows that frictional properties of a principal slip zone gouge play a determining role for rupture initiation and propagation. Upgrading the methods for processing weak seismicity data to estimate the "slowness" of microearthquakes confined to a fault zone may provide new approaches in fault zone monitoring to derive indirect information on the material composition of a fault slip zone and, thus, on its seismogenic potential. At present, such methods can be useful in the problems of damage reduction from man-made earthquakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]