Imaging the nonvolcanic tremor zone beneath the San Andreas fault at Cholame, California using station-pair double-difference tomography

Nonvolcanic tremors have been detected deep beneath the San Andreas fault (SAF) near Cholame, California. The tremors are modulated by small stress changes induced by Earth tides and regional and teleseismic earthquakes, implying elevated pore fluid pressure in the tremor zone. In this area, tremors lie beneath the seismogenic zone, limiting the usefulness of local earthquakes for resolving seismic velocity properties in the tremor zone. Station-pair double-difference tomography that uses differential tremor arrival times is used, for the first time, to provide new detailed information about the complexity of the lower-crust and upper-mantle transition and the occurrence of deep tremors in zones of localized low shear wave velocity anomalies. The anomalies may represent zones containing high-pore pressure fluids that migrate into the tremor zone episodically from the southwest and that are ultimately derived from dehydration of deep serpentinized mantle wedge material. These results improve our understanding of the tremor process, why tremors are concentrated in specific zones along the SAF, and possible relationships between tremors and large historic earthquakes.