If you have many earthquakes over the course of the earthquake cycle, each earthquake will cause more damage and the temperature pulse doesnít have to be as high to reset the fission track age. For example, if we have 10,000 events, each event only needs to reach about 250ƒC. Given the history of the San Gabriel Fault, 10,000 events is equivalent to recurrence interval of 500 years.
How do these temperature spikes correspond to earthquake size? These lines show the temperature resulting from different amounts of slip on a fault with Byerlee friction and hydrostatic pore pressure at our depth of interest. We find that a 3m slip earthquake once evey 500 years would completely reset the fission track age. A single earthquake with 6 m slip would have the same effect.
