ALBERT

Beschreibung: We compare the spatiotemporal progression, geometry, and earthquake source characteristics of a zone of anomalous swarm seismicity between the Maacama and Bartlett Springs faults (California, United States) within the northern San Andreas fault system to both laboratory studies of fracture initiation and structural field observations of fault formation. The similarities between laboratory and field studies of incipient faulting and the earthquake swarms suggest that the seismic lineament on which the swarms occur is a fault in an early stage of development. Kinematic descriptions of faulting and models of fault system development suggest that the ability of existing faults to accommodate deformation across plate boundaries is governed by the length scales over which they accommodate stress. Many of the characteristics of juvenile fault zones, such as segmentation, geometric complexity, and the depth extent of faulting, act to reduce this length scale; this requires the reactivation of existing faults or production of accessory faults to accommodate deformation across the plate boundary.

Beschreibung: The mapping of the fit of seismic moment tensor (MT) solutions in source-type space helps to characterize uncertainty and solution uniqueness. Current practice relies on the forward testing of a distribution of randomly generated MTs in source-type space, which is slow and does not necessarily recover the true maximum fit surface. We design an iterative damped least-squares inversion scheme to invert waveforms and/or P -wave first motions for best-fitting MT solutions for specific source types. An event associated with the sinkhole at the Napoleonville salt dome, Louisiana, an industrial quarry explosion, and an earthquake at The Geysers geothermal field, northern California, are presented as examples. We find that the inversion method is more accurate and successful than the random-search approach in recovering the region of best-fitting MT solutions or source types and is substantially faster. The approach also enables the determination of the best-fitting MT for specified source types such as pure double couples, tensile cracks, or explosions, as well as compound mechanisms in a single numerical framework. Online Material: Description and figures comparing inversion performance using spherical and Cartesian eigenvector parameterizations; figures showing the revised full moment tensor solution of event TE1 and additional network sensitivity solutions of event TE3.

Beschreibung: The Geysers geothermal field is one of the most seismically active regions in northern California. Most of the events occur at shallow depths and are related to stress and hydrological perturbations due to energy production operations. To better understand the relationships between seismicity and operations, better source mechanism information is needed. Seismic moment tensors offer insight into the nature of equivalent forces causing the seismicity. Fifty-three M 〉3 events located at The Geysers geothermal field were selected from the University of California Berkeley Moment Tensor Catalog for analysis of seismic moment tensor solutions and associated uncertainties. Deviatoric and full moment tensor solutions were computed, and statistical tests were employed to assess solution stability, resolution, and significance. In this study, we examine several source models including double-couple (DC), pure isotropic (ISO; volumetric change), and volume-compensated linear vector dipole (CLVD) sources, as well as compound sources such as DC+CLVD, DC+ISO, and shear–tensile sources. In general, we find from a systematic approach toward characterizing uncertainties in moment tensor solutions that The Geysers earthquakes, as a population, deviate significantly from northern California seismicity in terms of apparent volumetric source terms and complexity. Online Material: Figures showing map of The Geysers with locations and deviatoric moment tensor solutions, distributions of isotropic parameter, K , for the 1992–2012 Berkeley Seismological Laboratory (BSL) catalog and studied events at The Geysers, and constrained moment tensor analysis of selected events. Catalogs of deviatoric and full moment tensor solutions.

Beschreibung: In this study, we investigate the 14 September 1988 U.S.–Soviet Joint Verification Experiment nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk test site in eastern Kazakhstan and two nuclear explosions conducted less than 10 years later at the Chinese Lop Nor test site. These events were very sparsely recorded by stations located within 1600 km, and in each case only three or four stations were available in the regional distance range. We have utilized a regional distance seismic waveform method fitting long-period, complete, three-component waveforms jointly with first-motion observations from regional stations and teleseismic arrays. The combination of long-period waveforms and first-motion observations provides a unique discrimination of these sparsely recorded events in the context of the Hudson et al. (1989) source-type diagram. We demonstrate through a series of jackknife tests and sensitivity analyses that the source type of the explosions is well constrained. One event, a 1996 Lop Nor shaft explosion, displays large Love waves and possibly reversed Rayleigh waves at one station, indicative of a large F -factor. We show the combination of long-period waveforms and P -wave first motions are able to discriminate this event as explosion-like and distinct from earthquakes and collapses. We further demonstrate the behavior of network sensitivity solutions for models of tectonic release and spall-based tensile damage over a range of F -factors and K -factors.

Beschreibung: The formation of a large sinkhole at the Napoleonville salt dome, Assumption Parish, Louisiana, in August 2012 was accompanied by a rich sequence of complex seismic events. We implemented a grid-search approach for automatic detection, location, and full moment tensor (MT) inversion of these events using 0.1–0.2 Hz displacement waveforms and 1D velocity models for the salt dome and the surrounding sedimentary strata. We were able to detect 62 events, with a 70% variance reduction (VR) detection threshold, during the one-day period (19:00 hours, 1 August to 19:00 hours, 2 August, 2012) just before the discovery of the sinkhole. The source mechanisms of these events show large isotropic volume-increase components (61%–82%), with magnitudes varying from M w  1.3 to 1.6 and good waveform fits (71%–86% VR). Locations are well constrained to an approximate depth of 470 m at the western edge of the salt dome, close to the sinkhole. For one representative event, the large volume-increase component in the full MT solution is statistically significant over the deviatoric MT solution and stable with respect to: (1) the velocity models and stations used in the inversion, and (2) the uncertainties in the hypocenter and the MT solution itself. The network sensitivity solution computed for this event using both waveforms and P -wave first motion polarities provides greater confidence in the dominantly explosive source mechanism, which can be attributed to high-pressure flow of natural gas or gas–water mixture through the disturbed rock zone below the sinkhole or pre-existing zones of weaknesses in the source region. Online Material: Figures showing Q sensitivity, spatial distribution of moment tensor solutions, waveform fits from inversion and 1D models, and tables of the velocity model and event catalog.

Beschreibung: Although optimal, computing the moment tensor solution is not always a viable option for the calculation of the size of an earthquake, especially for small events (say, below M w 2.0). Here we show an alternative approach to the calculation of the moment-rate spectra of small earthquakes, and thus of their scalar moments, that uses a network-based calibration of crustal wave propagation. The method works best when applied to a relatively small crustal volume containing both the seismic sources and the recording sites. In this study we present the calibration of the crustal volume monitored by the High-Resolution Seismic Network (HRSN), along the San Andreas Fault (SAF) at Parkfield. After the quantification of the attenuation parameters within the crustal volume under investigation, we proceed to the spectral correction of the observed Fourier amplitude spectra for the 100 largest events in our data set. Multiple estimates of seismic moment for the all events (1811 events total) are obtained by calculating the ratio of rms-averaged spectral quantities based on the peak values of the ground velocity in the time domain, as they are observed in narrowband-filtered time-series. The mathematical operations allowing the described spectral ratios are obtained from Random Vibration Theory (RVT). Due to the optimal conditions of the HRSN, in terms of signal-to-noise ratios, our network-based calibration allows the accurate calculation of seismic moments down to M w 〈 0. However, because the HRSN is equipped only with borehole instruments, we define a frequency-dependent Generalized Free-Surface Effect (GFSE), to be used instead of the usual free-surface constant F = 2. Our spectral corrections at Parkfield need a different GFSE for each side of the SAF, which can be quantified by means of the analysis of synthetic seismograms. The importance of the GFSE of borehole instruments increases for decreasing earthquake's size because for smaller earthquakes the bandwidth available for our calculations is consistently shifted towards higher frequencies.

Beschreibung: An issue for moment tensor (MT) inversion of shallow seismic sources is that some components of the Green’s functions have vanishing amplitudes at the free surface, which can result in bias in the MT solution. The effects of the free surface on the stability of the MT method become important as we continue to investigate and improve the capabilities of regional full MT inversion for source-type identification and discrimination. It is important to understand free-surface effects on discriminating shallow explosive sources for nuclear monitoring purposes. It may also be important in natural systems that have very shallow seismicity, such as volcanic and geothermal systems. We examine the effects of the free surface on the MT via synthetic testing and apply the MT-based discrimination method to three quarry blasts from the HUMMING ALBATROSS experiment. These shallow chemical explosions at ~10 m depth and recorded up to several kilometers distance represent rather severe source–station geometry in terms of free-surface effects. We show that the method is capable of recovering a predominantly explosive source mechanism, and the combined waveform and first-motion method enables the unique discrimination of these events. Recovering the design yield using seismic moment estimates from MT inversion remains challenging, but we can begin to put error bounds on our moment estimates using the network sensitivity solution technique ( Ford et al. , 2010 ). Online Material: Figures showing synthetic tests for a pure explosion and a composite source at local distances and table of moment tensor components.

Beschreibung: The rapid detection and characterization of megathrust earthquakes is a difficult task given their large rupture zone and duration. These events produce very strong ground vibrations in the near field that can cause weak motion instruments to clip, and they are also capable of generating large-scale tsunamis. The 2011 M  9 Tohoku-oki earthquake that occurred offshore Japan is one member of a series of great earthquakes for which extended geophysical observations are available. Here, we test an automated scanning algorithm for great earthquakes using continuous very long-period (100–200 s) seismic records from K-NET strong-motion seismograms of the earthquake. By continuously performing the cross-correlation of data and Green's functions (GFs) in a moment tensor analysis, we show that the algorithm automatically detects, locates and determines source parameters including the moment magnitude and mechanism of the great Tohoku-oki earthquake within 8 min of its origin time. The method does not saturate. We also show that quasi-finite-source GFs, which take into account the effects of a finite-source, in a single-point source moment tensor algorithm better fit the data, especially in the near-field. We show that this technique allows the correct characterization of the earthquake using a limited number of stations. This can yield information usable for tsunami early warning.