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Seismic swarms, fluid flow and hydraulic conductivity in the forearc offshore North Costa Rica and Nicaragua

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Abstract

At the continental margin of north Costa Rica and Nicaragua, the strongly hydrated Cocos Plate subducts beneath the Caribbean Plate. From the downgoing Cocos plate fluids are released through extensional fractures in the overriding plate. At the seafloor, they form fluid seeps, mounds and other types of fluid expulsion. Using an offshore temporary seismic network, we investigated seismicity possibly related to these processes and observed several swarms of earthquakes located on the continental slope trenchward of the seismogenic zone of S Nicaragua. The seismicity occurred within the downgoing plate, near the plate interface and in the overriding plate. We interpret these swarm events as an expression of pore pressure propagation under critical stress conditions driven by fluid release from the downgoing plate. In order to estimate hydraulic diffusivity and permeability values, we applied a theory developed for injection test interpretation to the spatio-temporal development of the swarms. The resulting diffusivity and permeability values are in the ranges of 28–305 m²/s and 3.2 × 10−14 m²–35.1 × 10−14 m², respectively, applying to the continental and oceanic crust near the plate interface. These values are somewhat larger than observed in drill logs on the margin wedge off north Costa Rica, but of comparable magnitude to values estimated for the Antofagasta 1995 earthquake aftershock sequence.

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Acknowledgments

This publication is contribution no. 250 of the Sonderforschungsbereich 574 “Volatiles and Fluids in Subduction Zones” at Kiel University. Florian Wolf helped greatly with the data processing. We thank the ship and crew of the RV Meteor for their assistance in the deployment of the stations. For the retrieval, we are indebted to the Costa Rican coast guard, in particular, Comandante R. Peralta for providing their ship and crew for the retrieval of part of the stations. We also sincerely thank the crew of Papagayo Seafood vessel for their immense assistance with the other part of the retrieval, and for their hospitality on board.

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  1. SFB 574, Department of Geophysics, Institute of Geosciences, Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Otto-Hahn-Platz 1, 24118, Kiel, Germany

    Martin Thorwart, Yvonne Dzierma & Wolfgang Rabbel

  2. SFB 574, GEOMAR Helmholtz-Zentrum für Ozeanforschung Kiel, Wischhofstrasse 1-3, 24148, Kiel, Germany

    Christian Hensen

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  1. Martin Thorwart
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Correspondence to Martin Thorwart.

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Thorwart, M., Dzierma, Y., Rabbel, W. et al. Seismic swarms, fluid flow and hydraulic conductivity in the forearc offshore North Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Int J Earth Sci (Geol Rundsch) 103, 1789–1799 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00531-013-0960-y

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