Non-double-couple mechanisms in the seismicity preceding the 1991-1993 Etna volcano eruption

Abstract

The temporal evolution of the complete source moment tensor is investigated for 28 earthquakes that occured at Mt Etna in the period August 1990-December 1991 preceeding the biggest eruption of the last three centuries. We perform several tests to check the robustness of the results of inversion considering different frequency ranges and different groups of stations. As well as the selection of good-quality data, the error analysis, statistically significant at the 95 per cent confidence level is employed to validate the findings of the inversion and to distinguish between physical solutions and artefacts of modelling. For events between 0.3 and 10 km depth, strike-slip mechanisms prevail on normal, inverse and dip-slip mechanisms; this is possibly due to the dyke-induced stress dominating the overall stress field at the surface, producing a continuous switch of the tensile and compressive axes. The regional E-W tension prevails at depth, as indicated by the prevalence of normal mechanisms. An increment of the non-double-couple components is observed immediately before the eruption and can be related to movements of fluids, even though, for some events, the complex interaction between tectonic stress and volcanic activity cannot be excluded. The source time functions retrieved are in general simple and short but some show complexities, as one would expect in volcanic seismicity. From the seismic scalar moment found, we extrapolate an empirical moment-magnitude relation that we compare with other relations proposed for the same area and computed for the duration magnitude and the equivalent Wood-Anderson magnitude.