CONSTRAINTS ON TEMPORAL VARIATIONS IN VELOCITY NEAR ANZA, CALIFORNIA,FROM ANALYSIS OF SIMILAR EVENT PAIRS

Similar earthquake pairs recorded by the Anza Seismic Network in south ern California are used as repeatable sources to place an upper limit on temporal changes in seismic velocity which occurred in the vicinity of the Anza seismic gap in the last 9 yr. Relative arrival times for each pair of events are found using a cross-correlation method and rel ative locations are calculated to verify that the pairs have nearly id entical hypocenters. The time separation between events in these pairs varies from less than a day to almost 7 yr. The longterm changes in s eismic travel times, as measured from the pairs with the longest time separation, are not significantly greater than the noise level estimat ed from the short-time-separation event pairs. Almost all P-wave paths show less than 0.06% (0.007 sec) change in travel time and all S-wave paths have less than 0.03% (0.004 sec) change. Sensitivity tests plac e an upper bound on traveltime changes that could be compensated by hy pocenter mislocation at 0.2%. There is no evidence that localized stre ss accumulation causes measurable changes in seismic velocity in the A nza region.