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Assignment for a UUG Geophysics class Slip-rate along the San Andreas Fault and Seismic hazard estimation for central California Introduction The San Andreas Fault (SAF) is seismically very active and generates many earthquakes every year. Only the largest earthquakes (Magnitude 6) tend to be very destructive and costly. The last earthquake along the SAF, the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake (M = 7.0), killed 62 people throughout central California, injured 3,757 people and left more than 12,000 people homeless. More than a century ago, the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake (M = 7.8) killed more than 3000 people and left between 225,000 and 300,000 people homeless out of a population of about 410,000. In this assignment you will learn how to use geodetic data collected across the SAF to calculate the slip rate along the central segment of the SAF, which will be used to estimate seismic hazard for central California. Background Geodetic measurements of crustal movements in California provide critical observations for understanding earthquakes. Almost a century ago, Read (1910) analyzed geodetic measurements acquired before and after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake to establish his “elastic rebound” theory (Figure 1). The theory proposes a two stage model of crustal deformation: elastic behavior in between earthquakes (interseismic) and fault rupture (coseismic) during earthquakes. Based on additional geodetic measurements and theoretical considerations, the elastic rebound theory expanded into a four stage conceptual model, known as the “the earthquake deformation cycle”. The two additional stages are pre- and post-seismic deformation, occurring short time before and after the large earthquake, respectively. So far, geodetic observations only detected interseismic, coseismic and postseismic deformation. Unfortunately, no measurements show a clear preseismic signal, which could serve as a precursor to an earthquake. In this assignment we will focus on interseismic defor