Earthquakes are among the most dramatic natural disasters worldwide and despite considerable efforts, robust geophysical precursors have not yet been observed before damaging earthquakes. 

The FaultScan project aims at revolutionizing our ability to directly observe transient deformation within the core of active faults and provide unprecedented accuracy in the detection of earthquake precursors. Our ambition is to develop a new, high resolution, seismic monitoring approach. we intend to grasp the opportunity of a recent step change in seismic instrumentation and data processing capabilities to achieve the most powerful telescope oriented towards an active fault.

We target the San Jacinto Fault (a branch of the San Andreas Fault system) that is currently believed to pose one of the largest seismic risks in California. It is an ideal fault for this project because it is very active, already extensively studied and easily accessible for the pilot field data acquisition work.

The Faultscan seismic telescope

The Faultscan seismic telescope is a dense array of seismic stations. It is located at the Piñon Flat observatory in Southern California approximately 10 km from the San Jacinto Fault. It is composed of 300, 3-component seismic stations that have been running continuously from April 2022 to October 2024. 

The 300 stations Faultscan seismic array at PFO

Piñon Flat Observatory (PFO)

Map of seismicity during the FaultScan array acquisition in the 80 km radius around the array.
19 144 events in the USGS catalog including 58 of magnitude>3 and 4 of magnitude >4. 

Publications related to the FaultScan project are open and can be accessed here:

Information on data acquired during previous preparatory experiments (including how to access):

The Team

PI: Florent Brenguier, Univ. Grenoble Alpes

Univ. Grenoble Alpes: Quentin Higueret, Coralie Aubert, Yixiao Sheng, Aurélien Mordret, Laura Pinzon-Rincon, François Lavoué, Pierre Boué

Univ. Cal. San Diego/IGPP: Frank Vernon, Dan Hollis

Univ. South. Cal.: Yehuda Ben-zion

Geospace tech.: Marcela Pineda, Clark Capes