Coupled Mechano-Electrokinetic Burridge-Knopoff Model of Fault Sliding Events and Transient Geoelectric Signals

We introduce the first fully self-consistent numerical model combining seismic micro-ruptures, occurring within a generalized Burridge-Knopoff spring-block model, with the nucleation and propagation of electric charge pulses within a coupled mechano-electrokinetic system. This model provides a general theoretical framework for modeling and analyzing geoelectric anomalies to earthquakes. In particular, it is able to reproduce the unipolar pulses that have often been reported before large seismic events, as well as various previously reported anomalies in the statistical moments of the ambient electric fields and the shape of their power spectra.