The purpose of this book is to get a practical understanding of the most common processing techniques in earthquake seismology. The book deals with manual methods and computer assisted methods. Each ...topic will be introduced with the basic theory followed by practical examples and exercises. There are manual exercises entirely based on the printed material of the book, as well as computer exercises based on public domain software. Most exercises are computer based. The software used, as well as all test data are available from http://extras.springer.com. This book is intended for everyone processing earthquake data, both in the observatory routine and in connection with research. Using the exercises, the book can also be used as a basis for university courses in earthquake processing. Since the main emphasis is on processing, the theory will only be dealt with to the extent needed to understand the processing steps, however references will be given to where more extensive explanations can be found. Includes: - Exercises - Test data - Public domain software (SEISAN) available from http://extras.springer.com
The Western Hellenic Subduction Zone is characterized by a transition from oceanic to continental subduction. In the southern oceanic portion of the system, abundant seismicity reaches depths of ...100 km to 190 km, while the northern continental portion rarely exhibits deep earthquakes. Our study investigates how this oceanic‐continental transition affects fluid release and related seismicity along strike. We present results from local earthquake tomography and double‐difference relocation in conjunction with published images based on scattered teleseismic waves. Our tomographic images recover both subducting oceanic and continental crusts as low‐velocity layers on top of high‐velocity mantle. Although the northern and southern trenches are offset along the Kephalonia Transform Fault, continental and oceanic subducting crusts appear to align at depth. This suggests a smooth transition between slab retreat in the south and slab convergence in the north. Relocated hypocenters outline a single‐planed Wadati‐Benioff Zone with significant along‐strike variability in the south. Seismicity terminates abruptly north of the Kephalonia Transform Fault, likely reflecting the transition from oceanic to continental subducted crust. Near 90 km depth, the low‐velocity signature of the subducting crust fades out and the Wadati‐Benioff Zone thins and steepens, marking the outline of the basalt‐eclogite transition. Subarc melting of the mantle is only observed in the southernmost sector of the oceanic subduction, below the volcanic part of the arc. Beneath the nonvolcanic part, the overriding crust appears to have undergone large‐scale silica enrichment. This enrichment is observed as an anomalously low Vp/Vs ratio and requires massive transport of dehydration‐derived fluids updip through the subducting crust.
Key Points
The oceanic crust subducting below central Greece contains a 10 km thin, single‐planed Wadati‐Benioff Zone
Transition between oceanic subduction (south) to continental subduction (north) is smooth rather than a tear
Mantle wedge corner is relatively dry, but there is abundant silica enrichment above the forearc interface
Subducting plates release fluids as they plunge into Earth's mantle and occasionally rupture to produce intraslab earthquakes. It is debated whether fluids and earthquakes are directly related. By ...combining seismic observations and geodynamic models from western Greece, and comparing across other subduction zones, we find that earthquakes effectively track the flow of fluids from their slab source at >80 km depth to their sink at shallow (<40 km) depth. Between source and sink, the fluids flow updip under a sealed plate interface, facilitating intraslab earthquakes. In some locations, the seal breaks and fluids escape through vents into the mantle wedge, thereby reducing the fluid supply and seismicity updip in the slab. The vents themselves may represent nucleation sites for larger damaging earthquakes.
SUMMARY
Seismic swarms have been observed for more than 40 yr along the coast of Nordland, Northern Norway. However, the detailed spatio-temporal evolution and mechanisms of these swarms have not yet ...been resolved due to the historically sparse seismic station coverage. An increased number of seismic stations now allows us to study a nearly decade-long sequence of swarms in the Jektvik area during the 2013–2021 time window. Our analysis resolves four major groups of seismic events, each consisting of several spatial clusters, that have distinct spatial and temporal behaviours. Computed focal mechanism solutions are predominantly normal with NNE–SSW strike direction reflecting a near-vertical maximum principal stress and a NW–SE near-horizontal minimum principal stress, which are controlled by local NW–SE extension. We attribute the swarms to fluid-saturated fracture zones that are reactivated due to this local extension. Over the time period, the activity tends to increase between February and May, which coincides with the late winter and beginning of spring time in Norway. We hypothesize that the seismicity is modulated seasonally by hydrological loading from snow accumulation. This transient hydrological load results in elastic deformation that is observed at local Global Navigation Satellite System stations. The loading is shown to promote failure in a critically stressed normal faulting system. Once a segment is activated, it can then also trigger neighboring segments via stress transfer. Our new results point to a close link between lithosphere and hydrosphere contributing to the occurrence of seismic swarm activity in northern Norway.
Norway experiences low to intermediate seismicity, mainly caused by ridge push of the Mid-Atlantic ridge. To gain a better understanding of local tectonics and fundamental physics, we used the ...empirical Green’s function (EGF) method to obtain earthquake source parameters in Norway. We validated our findings against earthquake source parameters obtained from spectral analysis. Between January 1990 and May 2018, we found 263 earthquake pairs eligible for the EGF method. The local magnitudes of the 107 master events range between 1.3 and 3.4. Based on the Brune (J Geophys Res 75(26):4997–5009,
1970
) source model, we obtained stress drops between 0.4 and 355 bar. We observed an increase of stress drop with earthquake size in southern Norway and the Svalbard archipelago. Calculated fault radii between 80 and 320 m suggest that larger magnitudes are caused more by increase in slip than by increase in fault dimension. Hence, our results indicate that smaller earthquakes in southern Norway and the Svalbard archipelago deviate from the assumption of self-similarity. Stress drops obtained for northern Norway show only weak correlation with seismic moment and therefore fit into the theory of earthquake self-similarity.
Ambient seismic noise is caused by a number of sources in specific frequency bands. The quantification of ambient noise makes it possible to evaluate station and network performance. We evaluate ...noise levels in Norway from the 2013 data set of the Norwegian National Seismic Network as well as two temporary deployments. Apart from the station performance, we studied the geographical and temporal variations, and developed a local noise model for Norway. The microseism peaks related to the ocean are significant in Norway. We, therefore, investigated the relationship between oceanic weather conditions and noise levels. We find a correlation of low-frequency noise (0.125–0.25 Hz) with wave heights up to 900 km offshore. High (2–10 Hz) and intermediate (0.5–5 Hz) frequency noise correlates only up to 450 km offshore with wave heights. From a geographic perspective, stations in southern Norway show lower noise levels for low frequencies due to a larger distance to the dominant noise sources in the North Atlantic. Finally, we studied the influence of high-frequency noise levels on earthquake detectability and found that a noise level increase of 10 dB decreases the detectability by 0.5 magnitude units. This method provides a practical way to consider noise variations in detection maps.
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