Absolute and relative locations of similar events with application to microearthquakes in southern Iceland

Abstract

It is well known that similar earthquakes, i.e. earthquakes having almost identical waveforms, allow extremely accurate relative timing of the seismic arrivals. This has traditionally been used for achieving accurate relative locations of clusters of similar earthquakes. The arrival time differences between similar events depend not only on their relative location but also on the absolute location of the group. Moving a pair of events 200 m while retaining their relative locations can cause a 1 ms change in the time difference between the first arrivals of the events at a station 6 km distant. A change in time difference of 1ms can easily be estimated by cross‐correlating the waveforms of the two earthquakes. We use the accurate relative timings to improve absolute locations of groups of similar events, as well as to obtain extremely accurate relative locations. The absolute locations from relative timings are expected to have errors that are independent of the errors associated with locations based on absolute arrival time observations. We analyse data from five earthquake sequences, comprising a total of 96 earthquakes, recorded by a regional network in southern Iceland. One of the clusters is located within the on‐land spreading ridge in south‐western Iceland, and the other four are within the South Iceland seismic zone, a transform zone between overlapping branches of the spreading ridge. The events vary in magnitude between Ml−0.3 and 2.8. After determining the absolute and relative locations of each swarm, we estimate the orientation of a best‐fitting plane through the hypocenters. The mean distance of events from a best‐fitting plane varies between 4 and 15 m for the five swarms. This is comparable to the formal error estimates for the relative locations. Together with (non‐unique) fault‐plane solutions, the relative locations constrain the fault planes and the type of faulting. Faulting within the nascent transform zone in southern Iceland is predominantly strike slip on near‐vertical N‐S striking planes, in agreement with the orientation of mapped earthquake fractures in the area. The earthquakes within the spreading zone clearly define a fault plane striking parallel to the ridge and dipping 63°. Each group of similar events probably represents repeated slip on the same fault. Copyright © 1995, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved