Spatial relation of surface faults and crustal seismicity: a first comparison in the region of Switzerland

Abstract

The deformation pattern in active orogens is in general diffuse and distributed, and is expressed by spatially scattered seismicity and fault network. We select two relating datasets in the region encompassing Switzerland and analyse how they compare with each other. The datasets are not complete but are the best datasets currently available which fully cover the investigated area at a uniform scale. The distribution of distances from each earthquake to the nearest fault suggests that about two-thirds of the seismicity occurs near faults, yet about 10% occurs far from known faults. These numbers are stable for various selections of earthquakes and even when considering location uncertainties. Earthquake magnitudes in the catalogue are smaller than what could be expected from faults lengths. This suggests that the deep fracture pattern is more segmented than the superficial one, or mostly partial rupture during earthquakes, and (partly) the impropriety of the scaling law. Statistics on the distances from each fault to the nearest earthquake reveal that all supposedly-active faults in Switzerland have experienced a typically felt (magnitude 2.5 or larger) event, and only one out of six has not done so in the past four decades. Future applications of the presented approach to more complete or comprehensive fault databases may result in revised numbers regarding the connection between deep and superficial fracture patterns, representative of the stress regime of the region. The public and educational message: (1) in the region of Switzerland, earthquakes can happen in areas without known or mapped faults; (2) not all faults produce earthquakes within a human lifetime, but they seem to do so over long times.