Patterns of local seismicity preceding the petatlan earthquake of 14 March 1979

1981 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 761-769
Author(s):  
J. F. Gettrust ◽  
V. Hsu ◽  
C. E. Helsley ◽  
E. Herrero ◽  
T. Jordan

abstract Local seismic activity (M > 2.3) during the 412-day period preceding the Petatlan earthquake of 14 March 1979 (Ms = 7.6) was monitored by a seismic network deployed by the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics. These data allow us to revise the location of that event, and to study its pattern of foreshocks. The foreshock hypocenters are concentrated above the ocean/continent plate boundary and landward of the hypocenter of the main shock. The spatial distribution of foreshocks suggests that the foreshocks occurred along existing zones of weakness within the continental plate. During the 112-day period preceding the Petatlan event, foreshocks were concentrated within 100 km of the epicenter of that earthquake. The pattern of precursory seismic activity we observed during that period is similar to that observed during the same time period prior to the Oaxaca earthquake of 29 November 1978. However, the 17-hr period of seismic quiescence (for events with M > 2.8) preceding the Oaxaca earthquake is not found in our data where a magnitude 4 foreshock occurs within 28 min of and 2 km from the Petatlan event. This suggests that the spatially larger set of foreshocks may have greater diagnostic value than does the sequence of precursory events within 30 km of the main shock.

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 1212
Author(s):  
E.M. Olasoglou ◽  
T.M. Tsapanos ◽  
E.E. Papadimitriou ◽  
G.N. Drakatos

study on the aftershock sequences distributed along the subductions in Japan and Kuril islands, as well as in Kamchatka is undertaken. Aftershock sequences, having a main shock magnitude Mw >7.0, during the time period 1973-2013 are taken into account. The data used (mainshocks, aftershocks and foreshocks if there are any) are restricted in shallow focal depths. A large earthquake in Japan Trench (11 March 2011 / Mw=9.0) occurred and for this reason the investigated area is of particular interest. Our study is concentrated on the spatial distribution of some parameters [Mc, a, b (Gutenberg-Richter distribution) and p, c, k (Omori’s law)] closely associated with the seismic sequences statistics.


2016 ◽  
Vol 445 ◽  
pp. 125-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catriona D. Menzies ◽  
Damon A.H. Teagle ◽  
Samuel Niedermann ◽  
Simon C. Cox ◽  
Dave Craw ◽  
...  

1988 ◽  
Vol 78 (1) ◽  
pp. 172-187
Author(s):  
Kenneth D. Smith ◽  
Keith F. Priestley

Abstract The ML 6.4 Chalfant, California, earthquake of 21 July 1986 was preceded by an extensive foreshock sequence. Foreshock activity is characterized by shallow clustering activity, including 7 events greater than ML 3, beginning 18 days before the earthquake, an ML 5.7 foreshock 24 hr before the main shock that ruptured only in the upper 10 km of the crust, and an “off-fault” cluster of activity perpendicular to the slip surface of the ML 5.7 foreshock associated with the hypocenter of the main shock. The Chalfant sequence occurred within the local short-period network, and the spatial and temporal development of the foreshock sequence can be observed in detail. Seismicity of the July 1986 time period is largely confined to two nearly conjugate planes; one striking N30°E and dipping 60° to the northwest associated with the ML 5.7 foreshock and the other striking N25°W and dipping 70° to the southwest associated with the main shock. Focal mechanisms for the foreshock period fall into two classes in agreement with these two planes. Shallow clustering of earthquakes in July and the ML 5.7 principal foreshock occur at the intersection of the two planes at a depth of approximately 7 km. The seismic moments determined from inversion of the teleseismic body waves are 4.2 × 1025 and 2.5 × 1025 dyne-cm for the principal foreshock and the main shock, respectively. Slip areas for these two events can be estimated from the aftershock distribution and result in stress drops of 63 bars for the principal foreshock and 16 bars for the main shock. The main shock occurred within an “off-fault” cluster of earthquakes associated with the principal foreshock. This cluster of activity occurs at a predicted local shear stress high in relation to the slip surface of the 20 July earthquake, and this appears to be the triggering mechanism of the main shock. The shallow rupture depth of the principal foreshock indicates that this event was anomalous with respect to the character of main shocks in the region.


1965 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agustin Udias

Abstract The earthquake sequences connected with the earthquakes of August 31 and September 14, 1963 in the Salinas-Watsonville region of California are here studied with reference to the background seismic activity. A very favorable distribution of permanent and mobile stations in this area permits the analysis to include earthquakes of small magnitudes. The mechanism of the larger aftershocks of both sequences is found to be similar to the mechanism of the main shock of September 14, 1963. The orientation of the principal axes of stress derived from the focal mechanism of the September 14 earthquake, is related to the strike of the San Andreas fault.


2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 1099-1104 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Colangelo ◽  
V. Lapenna ◽  
L. Telesca

Abstract. Geoelectrical fluctuations measured in seismic areas have been attributed to stress and strain changes, associated with earthquakes. The complex nature of this problem has suggested the development of monitoring stations in order to perform geophysical monitoring for a long time period and with a high sample rate. In this paper, anomalous geoelectrical fluctuations of SP signals recorded in the S. Loja basin, Lucano Apennine chain by Tito and Picerno stations, and linked with seismic activity, are analyzed and discussed.


1994 ◽  
Vol 1 (2/3) ◽  
pp. 182-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Eneva

Abstract. Using finite data sets and limited size of study volumes may result in significant spurious effects when estimating the scaling properties of various physical processes. These effects are examined with an example featuring the spatial distribution of induced seismic activity in Creighton Mine (northern Ontario, Canada). The events studied in the present work occurred during a three-month period, March-May 1992, within a volume of approximate size 400 x 400 x 180 m3. Two sets of microearthquake locations are studied: Data Set 1 (14,338 events) and Data Set 2 (1654 events). Data Set 1 includes the more accurately located events and amounts to about 30 per cent of all recorded data. Data Set 2 represents a portion of the first data set that is formed by the most accurately located and the strongest microearthquakes. The spatial distribution of events in the two data sets is examined for scaling behaviour using the method of generalized correlation integrals featuring various moments q. From these, generalized correlation dimensions are estimated using the slope method. Similar estimates are made for randomly generated point sets using the same numbers of events and the same study volumes as for the real data. Uniform and monofractal random distributions are used for these simulations. In addition, samples from the real data are randomly extracted and the dimension spectra for these are examined as well. The spectra for the uniform and monofractal random generations show spurious multifractality due only to the use of finite numbers of data points and limited size of study volume. Comparing these with the spectra of dimensions for Data Set 1 and Data Set 2 allows us to estimate the bias likely to be present in the estimates for the real data. The strong multifractality suggested by the spectrum for Data Set 2 appears to be largely spurious; the spatial distribution, while different from uniform, could originate from a monofractal process. The spatial distribution of microearthquakes in Data Set 1 is either monofractal as well, or only weakly multifractal. In all similar studies, comparisons of result from real data and simulated point sets may help distinguish between genuine and artificial multifractality, without necessarily resorting to large number of data.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei-Fang Sun ◽  
Hao Kuo-Chen ◽  
Zhuo-Kang Guan ◽  
Wen-Yen Chang

<p>In the Hualien area, two Mw6.4 and Mw6.2 earthquakes, 20 km apart, occurred in February 2018 and April 2019 respectively. The former to the northeast, located offshore to ​​the Liwu river, triggered several earthquake clusters along the Milun fault and southward to the Longitudinal Valley, the suture of the Eurasian and the Philippine Sea plates; the latter to the southwest, located in the Central Range, also triggered several seismic swarms in the Central Range,  along the Liwu river to the northeast and at Ji'an to the southeast. Except for the Milun fault, neither GPS nor InSAR observations detects significant surface deformation after the occurrence of these two main shocks, indicating that the earthquake ruptures mainly developed within the crust. Therefore, seismic observation becomes an efficient tool for revealing the seismotectonics of the two earthquake sequences. For monitoring the aftershock sequences, two days after the main shocks, we deployed two geophone arrays, 70 Z-component RefTek 125A TEXANs for two weeks in 2018 and 47 three-component Fairfield Nodal Z-Lands for one month in 2019, with 1-5 km station spacing around the Hualien City. These earthquake swarms were well recorded and analyzed through the dense seismic networks. The numbers of aftershock sequences manually identified are two-fold more than that issued by the Central Weather Bureau, Taiwan. The seismicity of the 2018 aftershock sequence, to depths of between 5-15 km, was significantly reduced within 10 days after the main shock. however, the seismicity of the 2019 aftershock sequence, to depths of between 2-50 km, was still above background seismicity rate 30 days after the main shock. The spatial distribution of the 2018 aftershock sequence could be related to a fault zone of the plate boundary, but that of the 2019 and the relocated 1986 aftershock sequences show a conjugate thrust fault pair beneath the eastern Central Range. Our results clearly depict several local tectonic structures that have not been observed at the northern tip of the Longitudinal Valley, not only a suture but also a transitional area from collision to subduction.</p>


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