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Fischer & Horálek 2005
Fischer, T. and Horálek, J. (2005). Slip-generated patterns of swarm microearthquakes from West Bohemia/Vogtland (central Europe): Evidence of their triggering mechanism?. Journal of Geophysical Research 110: doi: 10.1029/2004JB003363. issn: 0148-0227.

We investigated space-time relations between consecutive events of West Bohemian 2000 swarm and their association with the Coulomb stress changes induced on a fault plane by prior swarm events. A few thousand M ≤ 3.3 strike-slip swarm earthquakes clustered along a fault plane at depths 6.5--10.5 km and showed common rake angle of 30¿. In order to disclose earthquake interaction we investigated the space-time relations between consecutive earthquakes. We determined relative position vectors for each consecutive event pair, the prior event and the immediate aftershock (IA), and we measured time lags between them. The resulting cluster of relative position vectors shows a high density of aftershocks near the origin, which decays with distance. It points out a triggering effect of the prior event upon subsequent aftershocks. The spatial distribution of the relative positions disclosed dominance of aftershocks in the slip-parallel directions, which is manifested by pronounced elongation of the cluster of the relative positions and of the angular dependence of the rate of IAs. The temporal distribution of the relative positions indicates that some aftershocks prove high interevent velocities and occur systematically at greater distances, suggesting the existence of two distinct triggering mechanisms acting at large and small timescales. We evaluated the complete Coulomb stress change upon the fault plane due to the prior event and showed that the observed space-time distribution of the relative positions can be explained by a common effect of both static and dynamic stress changes, which act on different distance and timescale.

BACKGROUND DATA FILES

Abstract

Keywords
Seismology, Earthquake dynamics, Seismology, Earthquake source observations, Seismology, Seismicity and tectonics (1207, 1217, 1240, 1242), Tectonophysics, Stresses, general, earthquake swarms, triggering mechanisms, Coulomb stress
Journal
Journal of Geophysical Research
http://www.agu.org/journals/jb/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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