The accommodation of relative motion at depth on the San Andreas fault system in California

Plate motion below the seismogenic layer along the San Andreas fault system in California is assumed to form by aseismic slip along a deeper extension of the fault or may result from lateral distribution of deformation below the seismogenic layer. The shallow depth of California earthquakes, the depth of the coseismic slip during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the presence of widely separated parallel faults indicate that relative motion is distributed below the seismogenic zone, occurring by inelastic flow rather than by aseismic slip on discrete fault planes.