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pySATSI: A Python package for computing focal mechanism stress inversions

Robert J. Skoumal·Jeanne L. Hardebeck·Andrew J. Michael
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Abstract

We introduce pySATSI, a Python package for computing earthquake focal mechanism stress inversions. This algorithm can handle a wide variety of types of stress inversion problems with a single script and can duplicate many capabilities of preceding methodologies. We also add new capabilities that include spatiotemporally variable inversion grids, damped stress estimates for clusters with few or no focal mechanisms, and variable fault‐plane ambiguities that the user can assign to individual events. In addition, we added the ability to use damped stress inversions with fault‐plane ambiguity probabilities that are weighted by fault instabilities. Our algorithm is computationally efficient with faster runtimes than previous algorithms, scales well for large datasets, and can be easily parallelized.

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Seismological Research LettersArticle

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Robert J. Skoumal, Jeanne L. Hardebeck, Andrew J. Michael. 2026-01-26. pySATSI: A Python package for computing focal mechanism stress inversions. https://doi.org/10.1785/0220250182

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