Reply to "Comment on 'Models of Stochastic, Spatially Varying Stress in the Crust Compatible with Focal-Mechanism Data, and How Stress Inversions Can Be Biased toward the Stress Rate' by Deborah Elaine Smith and Thomas H. Heaton" by Jeanne L. Hardebeck

Abstract

In her comment (Hardebeck, 2015) on our stress heterogeneity article (Smith and Heaton, 2011), Hardebeck suggests a different focal‐mechanism error distribution than what we used in our 2011 article and suggests that this new error distribution will reduce our estimates of stress heterogeneity. In response to this, we have rerun our calculations three ways: (1) with the original mechanism error distribution from Smith and Heaton (2011), (2) with a mechanism error distribution similar to the one presented by Hardebeck (2015), and (3) with a mechanism error distribution derived from repeating earthquake statistics. We find the two new mechanism error models, relative to the original mechanism error distribution, reduce the heterogeneity ratio (HR) estimates by approximately 35%–40% (using Hardebeck’s suggested distribution) and by approximately 8%–10% (using the repeating earthquake based error distribution).