locating non volcanic tremor along the san andreas fault using a multiple array source imaging technique summary non volcanic tremor nvt has been observed at several subduction zones and at the san andreas fault saf tremor locations are commonly derived by cross correlating envelope transformed seismic traces in combination with source scanning techniques recently they have also been located by using relative relocations with master events that is low frequency earthquakes that are part of the tremor locations are derived by conventional traveltime based methods here we present a method to locate the sources of nvt using an imaging approach for multiple array data the performance of the method is checked with synthetic tests and the relocation of earthquakes we also applied the method to tremor occurring near cholame california a set of small aperture arrays i e an array consisting of arrays installed around cholame provided the data set for this study we observed several tremor episodes and located tremor sources in the vicinity of saf during individual tremor episodes we observed a systematic change of source location indicating rapid migration of the tremor source along saf

roller bearing tectonic evolution of the juan fernandez microplate a combined gloria sidescan and hydrosweep multi narrow beam sonar survey shows striking evidence for fan shaped spreading systems bounding pseudofaults and compression ridges associated with 90 of clockwise rotation of the juan fernandez microplate in the past 4 myr a quantitative analysis of this evolution suggests that the microplate has rotated as a rigid roller bearing for most of its history driven at its edges by shear between the surrounding major plates the remarkable similarity between the juan fernandez and easter microplates despite their different tectonic settings suggests that this is a general model for microplate tectonics

evolution of the juan fernandez microplate during the last three million years during the spring of 1983 the r v thomas washington surveyed an area located north of the antarctic nazca pacific triple junction at 35 s magnetic and seabeam bathymetric data collected during the survey confirmed the existence of the juan fernandez microplate this paper presents an analysis of the magnetic anomaly data the western boundary of the microplate is a fast spreading center which has existed since 2 ma and where the accretion rate has been about 14 5 cm yr for the last 0 7 ma the eastern boundary of the microplate is characterized by a slow spreading center which separates the juan fernandez and nazca plates the accretion rate has been about 7 0 cm yr between 0 7 and 0 4 ma and about 1 6 cm yr for the last 0 4 ma the two spreading centers are connected in the north and south by transform faults between the juan fernandez and rapanui microplates the east pacific rise is well defined between 30 and 32 s in this region the axis displays a record accretion of about 17 2 cm yr south of the juan fernandez microplate one magnetic profile oceano 7008 indicates that the opening rate is about 12 0 cm yr on the antarctic pacific ridge the birth of the microplate is dated at about 2 ma when the western boundary started to accrete the evolution of the microplate corresponds to a transfer of accretion from the eastern boundary to the western axis this is revealed by the net decrease of the opening rate from 7 0 cm yr to 1 6 cm yr observed at the eastern ridge where a small jump occurred at 0 4 ma

slow ridge hotspot interactions from global gravity seismic tomography and 87sr 86sr isotope data summary among the mantle hotspots present under oceanic areas a large number are located on or close to active oceanic ridges this is especially true in the slow spreading atlantic and indian oceans the recent availability of worldwide gravity grids and the increasing coverage of geochemical data sets along active spreading centres allow a fruitful comparison of these data with global geoid and seismic tomography models and allow one to study interactions between mantle plumes and active slow spreading ridges the observed correlations allow us to draw preliminary conclusions on the general links between surficial processes which shape the detailed morphology of the ridge axes and deeper processes active in the upper mantle below the ridge axial domains as a whole the interactions are first studied at the scale of the atlantic the mid atlantic ridge from iceland to bouvet island from the correlation between the zero age free air gravity anomaly which reflects the zero age depth of the ridge axis and sr isotopic ratios of ridge axis basalts the study is then extended to a more global scale the slow ridges from iceland to the gulf of aden by including geoid and uppermantle tomography models the interactions appear complex ranging from the evect of large and very productive plumes almost totally overprinting the long wavelength segmentation pattern of the ridge to that of weaker hotspots barely marking some of the observables in the ridge axial domain intermediate cases are observed in which hotspots of medium activity or whose activity has gradually decreased located at some distance from the ridge axis produce geophysical or geochemical signals whose variation along the axis can be correlated with the geometry of the plume head in the upper mantle such observations tend to preclude the use of a single hotspot ridge interaction model and stress the need for additional observations in various plume ridge configurations

complex evolution of transient slip derived from precise tremor locations in western shikoku japan transient slip events which occur more slowly than traditional earthquakes are increasingly being recognized as important components of strain release on faults and may substantially impact the earthquake cycle surface based geodetic instruments provide estimates of the overall slip distribution in larger transients but are unable to capture the detailed evolution of such slip either in time or in space accompanying some of these slip transients is a relatively weak extended duration seismic signal known as nonvolcanic tremor which has recently been shown to be generated by a sequence of shear failures occurring as part of the slip event by precisely locating the tremor we can track some features of slip evolution with unprecedented resolution here we analyze two weeklong episodes of tremor and slow slip in western shikoku japan we find that these slip transients do not evolve in a smooth and steady fashion but contain numerous subevents of smaller size and shorter duration in addition to along strike migration rates of 10 km d observed previously much faster migration also occurs usually in the slab dip direction at rates of 25 150 km h over distances of up to 20 km we observe such migration episodes in both the updip and downdip directions these episodes may be most common on certain portions of the plate boundary that generate strong tremor in intermittent bursts the surrounding regions of the fault may slip more continuously driving these stronger patches to repeated failures tremor activity has a strong tidal periodicity possibly reflecting the modulation of slow slip velocity by tidal stresses

precise location of san andreas fault tremors near cholame california using seismometer clusters slip on the deep extension of the fault 1 we examine a 24 hour period of active san andreas fault saf tremor and show that this tremor is largely composed of repeated similar events utilizing this similarity we locate the subset of the tremor with waveforms similar to an identified low frequency earthquake lfe master template located using p and s wave arrivals to be 26 km deep to compensate for low signal to noise we estimate event pair differential times at clusters of nearby stations rather than at single stations we find that the locations form a near linear structure in map view striking parallel to the saf and near the surface trace therefore we suggest that at least a portion of the tremor occurs on the deep extension of the fault likely reflecting shear slip similar to subduction zone tremor if so the saf may extend to the base of the crust 10 km below the deepest regular earthquakes on the fault

teleseismic estimates of the energy radiated by shallow earthquakes the energy flux contained in the p wave groups p pp sp or the s wave groups s ps ss radiated by a shallow earthquake is modeled assuming that the energy flux in the direct and depth phases adds incoherently by defining generalized radiation patterns which incorporate this neutral interference the wave groups are analyzed as though they were comprised of a single phase measurements of the energy flux in the wave groups are corrected in the frequency domain for both the body wave attenuation and the frequency band of the recording the corrected measurements are then used to estimate the seismic energy radiated by the earthquake this analysis is applied to digital recordings of the teleseismic wave groups radiated by the may 2 1983 coalinga california earthquake and the october 28 1983 borah peak idaho earthquake for the coalinga earthquake an estimate of es 1 6 0 4 1021 dyn cm was determined from six p wave groups while the sh wave group recorded at station col returned an estimate of es 1 2 1021 dyn cm for the borah peak earthquake an estimate ofes 3 2 0 5 1021 dyn cm was determined from seven p wave groups the distribution of the isoseismals for the borah peak earthquake indicate that the energy radiated by this event was focussed to the northwest in the direction of rupture propagation correcting the teleseismic estimate for this focussing gives es 3 6 0 5 1021 dyn cm combining these estimates of the radiated energy with broad band estimates of the seismic moment yields estimates of the apparent stress of 17 and 7 bars for the coalinga and the borah peak earthquakes respectively

triggered creep as a possible mechanism for delayed dynamic triggering of tremor and earthquakes the passage of radiating seismic waves generates transient stresses in the earth s crust that can trigger slip on faults far away from the original earthquake source the triggered fault slip is detectable in the form of earthquakes 1 3 and seismic tremor 4 7 however the significance of these triggered events remains controversial 8 9 in part because they often occur with some delay long after the triggering stress has passed here we scrutinize the location and timing of tremor on the san andreas fault between 2001 and 2010 in relation to distant earthquakes we observe tremor on the san andreas fault that is initiated by passing seismic waves yet migrates along the fault at a much slower velocity than the radiating seismic waves we suggest that the migrating tremor records triggered slow slip of the san andreas fault as a propagating creep event we find that the triggered tremor and fault creep can be initiated by distant earthquakes as small as magnitude 5 4 and can persist for several days after the seismic waves have passed our observations of prolonged tremor activity provide a clear example of the delayed dynamic triggering of seismic events fault creep has been shown to trigger earthquakes 10 12 and we therefore suggest that the dynamic

slow earthquakes and nonvolcanic tremor nonvolcanic tremor is observed in close association with geodetically observed slow slip events in subduction zones accumulating evidence points to these events as members of a family of slow earthquakes that occur as shear slip on the downdip extensions of fault zones in a regime that is transitional between a frictionally locked region above and a freely slipping region below by virtue of their locations and their properties slow earthquakes are certain to provide new insights into the behavior of earthquakes and faulting and into the hazard they embody

migrating transform zone and lithospheric transfer at the galapagos 95 5 w propagator at the 95 5 w propagator system along the cocos nazca plate boundary the spreading axis is offset left laterally about 35 km 1 m y this offset migrates westward 52 km m y relative to points along the nearly east west trending ridge axis transferring lithosphere from the cocos to the nazca plate as it does so the required 58 km m y of right lateral motion across this migrating transform is apparently not accommodated by a throughgoing north south transform fault but rather by an approximately 15 to 20 km wide zone of shear deformation dominated by eastward curving of east west structures to a northwest southeast trend this pattern of curvature the coinciding zone of high seismicity and the abundance of talus in the area suggest that shear is distributed over this entire zone the deformation is inferred to be taken up by a bookshelf mechanism whereby faults oriented at high angles to the shear couple have left lateral slip antithetic to the right lateral shear couple rotating individual blocks clockwise these are interpreted as reactivated abyssal hill bounding normal faults probably dipping 45 60 northeast southwest shortening due to the rotation appears to be accommodated by reverse slip on the faults and may account for the uplift of de steiguer ridge in the zone of transferred lithosphere these faults have apparently had a very complex history initially normal faults formed as abyssal hills were created at the spreading axis and subsequently they had left lateral strike slip motion in the transform zone and reverse motion uplifting de steiguer ridge strain analysis based on observed structural curvature suggests that shear is distributed nonuniformly and lithospheric transfer requires 0 4 m y

tectonic tremor and deep slow slip on the alpine fault 1 tectonic tremor is characterized by persistent low frequency seismic energy seen at major plate boundaries although predominantly associated with subduction zones tremor also occurs along the deep extension of the strike slip san andreas fault here we present the first observations of tectonic tremor along new zealand s alpine fault a major transform boundary that is late in its earthquake cycle we report tectonic tremor that occurred on the central section of the alpine fault on 12 days between march 2009 and october 2011 tremor hypocenters concentrate in the lower crust at the downdip projection of the alpine fault coincide with a zone of high p wave attenuation low qp and bright seismic reflections occur in the 25 45 km depth range below the seismogenic zone and may define the deep plate boundary structure extending through the lower crust and into the upper mantle we infer this tremor to represent slow slip on the deep extent of the alpine fault in a fluid rich region marked by high attenuation and reflectivity these observations provide the first indication of present day displacement on the lower crustal portion of the australia pacific transform plate boundary

triggered tectonic tremor in various types of fault systems of japan following the 2012 mw8 6 sumatra earthquake tectonic tremor an extremely stress sensitive seismic phenomenon occurring in the brittle ductile transition section of a fault is associated with the shearing mechanism of slow slip observations of triggered tremor can facilitate the evaluation of the existence of background ambient tremor and slow slip events this paper presents widespread triggered tremor sources in japan initiated by the surface waves of the 2012 mw8 6 sumatra earthquake on strike slip and thrust faults in the deep volcanic low frequency earthquake active area in the shallow tectonic tremor and very low frequency earthquake active regions and in the subduction zone in most regions the amplitudes of triggered tremor are generally logarithmically proportional to the dynamic stress caused by various triggering earthquakes our observations suggest that triggered tremor in the newly discovered sources is the result of a more rapid rate of background ambient tremor and evidence has suggested the existence of ambient tremor in some regions

comprehensive sonar imaging of the easter microplate recent gloria and seamarc ii sidescan sonar surveys have imaged virtually the whole of the easter microplate and revealed unprecedented detail and complexity in its tectonic fabric and history there is clear evidence of rapid microplate rotation of rapidly evolving plate boundaries and of complex deformation near the northern and southern microplate boundaries

subsurface imaging taiger experiments and tectonic models of taiwan abstract the seismicity deformation rates and associated erosion in the taiwan region clearly demonstrate that plate tectonic and orogenic activities are at a high level major geologic units can be neatly placed in the plate tectonic context albeit critical mapping in specific areas is still needed but the key processes involved in the building of the island remain under discussion of the two plates in the vicinity of taiwan the philippine sea plate psp is oceanic in its origin while the eurasian plate eup is comprised partly of the asian continental lithosphere and partly of the transitional lithosphere of the south china sea basin it is unanimously agreed that the collision of psp and eu is the cause of the taiwan orogeny but several models of the underlying geological processes have been proposed each with its own evolutionary history and implied subsurface tectonics taiger taiwan integrated geodynamics research crustal and mantle imaging experiments recently made possible a new round of testing and elucidation the new seismic tomography resolved structures under and offshore of taiwan to a depth of about 200 km in the upper mantle the steeply east dipping high velocity anomalies from southern to central taiwan are clear but only the extreme southern part is associated with seismicity toward the north the seismicity disappears the crustal root under the central range is strongly asymmetrical using 7 5 km s as a guide the steep west dipping face on the east stands in sharp contrast to a gradual east dipping face on the west a smaller root exists under the coastal range or slightly to the east of it between these two roots lies a well delineated high velocity rise spanning the length from hualien to taitung the 3 d variations in crustal and mantle structures parallel to the trend of the island are closely correlated with the plate tectonic framework of taiwan the crust is thickest in the central taiwan collision zone and although it thins toward the south the crust is over 30 km thick over the subduction in the south in northern taiwan the northward subducting psp collides with taiwan and the crust thins under northern taiwan where the subducting indenter reaches 50 km in depth the low vp vs ratio of around 1 6 at a mid crustal depth of 25 km in the central range indicates that current temperatures could exceed 700 c the remarkable thickening of the crust under the central range its rapid uplift without significant seismicity its deep exhumation and its thermal state contribute to make it the core of orogenic activities on taiwan island the expanded network during the taiger deployment captured broadband seismic data yielding enhanced s splitting results with mainly sks skks data the polarization directions of the fast s waves follow very closely the structural trends of the island supporting the concept of a vertically coherent taiwan orogeny in the outer few hundred kilometers of the earth

detecting low frequency earthquakes within non volcanic tremor in southern taiwan triggered by the 2005 mw8 6 nias earthquake 1 we use a matched filter technique to detect 41 low frequency earthquakes lfes within 700 s of triggered tremor signals in the southern central range in taiwan during the surface waves of the 2005 mw8 6 nias earthquake off the coast of northern sumatra the depth distributions of lfes after double difference relocations concentrate at the depth range of 12 38 km below the background seismicity and above the moho depth inferred from receiver function studies the locations of lfes are close to the downward extension of the steep dipping chaochou lishan fault with only modestly high vp vs ratios 1 75 1 85 our observation indicates that at least portions of triggered tremor consists of many lfes similar to ambient tremor observed at other major plate boundary faults

variations in slow slip moment rate associated with rapid tremor reversals in cascadia during large slow slip events tremor sometimes propagates in the reverse along strike direction for a few hours at speeds 10 to 40 times faster than the forward propagation we examine the aseismic slip that underlies this rapidly propagating tremor we use pbo plate boundary observatory borehole strainmeter data to search for variations in the slow slip moment rate during 35 rapid tremor reversals rtrs that occurred beneath vancouver island the strain records reveal that on average the strain rate increases by about 100 30 during rtrs given the green s functions expected for slip in the rtr locations these strain rate increases imply 50 to 130 increases in the aseismic moment rate the median moment released per rtr is between 8 and 21 of the daily slow slip moment equivalent to that of a mw 5 0 to 5 1 earthquake by combining the rtr moments with the spatial extents suggested by tremor we estimate that a typical rtr has peak slip of roughly one sixth of the peak slip in the main slow slip event near front slip rate of a few to ten times the main front slip rate stress drop around half the main event stress drop and strain energy release rate around one tenth that of the main front our observations support a picture of rtrs as aseismic subevents with high slip rates but modest strain energy release rtrs appear to contribute to but not dominate the overall slow slip moment though they may accommodate most of the slip in certain locations

a major hydrothermal reservoir underneath the tatun volcano group of taiwan clues from a dense linear geophone array a dense linear geophone array is deployed across the tatun volcano group tvg at the northern tip of taiwan where more than 7 million residents live in the taipei metropolis the array is composed of 50 geophones with a station spacing of 200 m in average and it is designed for striking in the nw se direction to record the many earthquakes in eastern taiwan where the philippine sea plate subducted beneath the eurasia plate the detailed examination of felt earthquakes shows consistent p wave delays are recorded at particular stations of the array the further forward modeling indicates there is a low velocity zone lvz at depths between 0 5 and 2 5 km beneath the major fumarole sites combining this preliminary result with previous studies including clustering seismicity volcanic earthquakes low resistivity zone strong degassing processes and shallow velocity structures we suggest that the lvz might be associated with the major hydrothermal reservoir at the tvg the identification of the hydrothermal reservoir by the lvz not only implies a potential volcanic threat such as phreatic eruptions in the future but also provides the possibility of sustainable geothermal resources for replacing traditional nuclear and fossil fuel power plants detailed images of the lvz and other volcanic structures will be obtained soon when dense geophone arrays with more than 600 geophones are deployed from 2020 to 2022

statistical properties of low frequency earthquakes triggered by large earthquakes in southern taiwan abstract the recent discovery of triggered tremors tts and low frequency earthquakes lfes in various tectonic environments provides an opportunity for studying the fundamental properties and physical mechanisms of deep tectonic tremor here we quantify the relationship between tts and lfes beneath the central range in southern taiwan and their statistical properties during the teleseismic waves of six large distant earthquakes using waveforms of 11 lfes triggered by the 2005 m w 8 6 nias earthquake as templates we scan through 12 hours of waveform data around six mainshocks and identify a total of 783 lfes the lfes were mainly located in a compact region between 12 and 36 km in depth near the chaochou lishan fault most of lfes occurred within tt during the passage of large amplitude surface waves and the increase of the lfe rate during the surface waves is statistically significant the lfe rates do not follow an omori s type decay but rather abruptly return to the background rate immediately after the surface wave passage these findings suggest that lfes do not trigger any additional lfes at later times and are primarily driven by an external forcing our observations are consistent with the inference that tts consist of many reoccurring lfes

rapid tremor reversals in cascadia generated by a weakened plate interface slow slip of the down going plate at subduction zones can generate seismic tremor analysis of recent large tremor and slip episodes along the cascadia subduction zone reveals tremor signals that reverse and rapidly migrate back along the previously ruptured fault implying that the initial fault slip weakened the plate interface

velocity field of gps stations in the taiwan area abstract the 131 stations of the taiwan gps network were surveyed 4 6 times from 1990 to 1995 with dual frequency geodetic receivers the standard deviation of an observed baseline length with its linear trend removed is in the range of 6 10 mm for a 3 120 km long baseline the average rates of length change for all baselines of the network and those from nine continuously monitoring permanent stations are used in a least squares adjustment to estimate the velocities of the gps stations relative to paisha penghu situated at the chinese continental margin to the south of fengping in the northern coastal range the velocity vectors of stations in lanhsu lutao and the coastal range trend in the directions of 306 322 with rates of 56 82 mm yr in contrast there is a dramatic decrease in the rates to the north of fengping this may be caused by the motion along the ne sw trending thrusts which obliquely cut the northern coastal range a discontinuity of about 30 mm yr in the rates along with a remarkable change in the directions of station velocity is observed across the longitudinal valley then the moving directions gradually shift to the west for the stations in the western foothills in the kaohsiung pingtung coastal area the station velocities are even directed toward the southwest to the north of the peikang high the velocity vectors of the stations change direction from the west gradually to the north and finally to the east and southeast significant nw se extensional deformation is found in the ilan plain and northern taiwan in general the pattern of the velocity field for gps stations in the taiwan area is quite consistent with the directions of present day tectonic stress

rupture propagation of the 2004 parkfield california earthquake from observations at the upsar using a short baseline seismic array u s geological survey parkfield dense seismograph array upsar about 12 km west of the rupture initiation of the 28 september 2004 m 6 0 parkfield california earthquake we have observed the movement of the rupture front of this earthquake on the san andreas fault the sources of high frequency arrivals at upsar which we use to identify the rupture front are mapped onto the san andreas fault using their apparent velocity and back azimuth measurements of apparent velocity and back azimuth are calibrated using aftershocks which have a compact source and known location aftershock back azimuths show considerable lateral refraction consistent with a high velocity ridge on the southwest side of the fault we infer that the initial mainshock rupture velocity was approximately the rayleigh speed with respect to slower side of the fault and the rupture then slowed to about 0 66 near the town of parkfield after 2 sec the last well correlated pulse 4 sec after s is the largest at upsar and its source is near the region of large accelerations recorded by strong motion accelerographs and close to northern extent of continuous surface fractures on the southwest fracture zone coincidence of sources with preshock and aftershock distributions suggests fault material properties control rupture behavior high frequency sources approximately correlate with the edges of asperities identified as regions of high slip derived from inversion of strong motion waveforms

observations of loma prieta aftershocks from a dense array in sunnyvale california a small aperture 300 m four station array was deployed in sunnyvale california for 5 days to record aftershocks of the loma prieta earthquake of october 1989 the purpose of the array was to study the seismic response of the alluvium filled santa clara valley and the role of surface waves in the seismic shaking of sedimentary basins strong motion records of the loma prieta mainshock indicate that surface waves produced the peak velocities and displacements at some sites in the santa clara valley we use the recordings from the dense array to determine the apparent velocity and azimuth of propagation for various arrivals in the seismograms of four aftershocks with magnitudes between 3 6 and 4 4 apparent velocities are generally observed to decrease with increasing time after the s wave in the seismograms phases arriving less than about 8 sec after the s wave have apparent velocities comparable to the s wave and appear to be body waves multiply reflected under the receiver site or reflected by crustal interfaces for times 10 to 30 sec after the direct s wave we observe long period 1 to 6 sec arrivals with apparent velocities decreasing from 2 5 to 0 8 km sec we interpret these arrivals to be surface waves and conclude that these surface waves produce the long duration of shaking observed on the aftershock records much of the energy in the 40 sec after the s wave is coming approximately from the direction of the source although some arrivals have backazimuths as much as 60 different from the backazimuths to the epicenters two of the aftershocks show arrivals coming from 30 to 40 more easterly than the epicenters this energy may have been scattered from outcrops along the southeastern edge of the basin in contrast the deepest aftershock studied d 17 km displays later arrivals with backazimuths 30 to 40 more westerly than the epicenter a distinct arrival for one of the aftershocks propagates from the southwest possibly scattered from the western edge of the basin synthetic seismograms derived from a plane layered crustal model do not produce the long period love waves observed in the waveforms of the ml 4 4 aftershock these love waves may be generated by the conversion of incident s waves or rayleigh waves near the edge of the basin

a comprehensive relocation of earthquakes in taiwan from 1991 to 2005 we have carried out a comprehensive relocation of a total of 267 210 earthquakes in taiwan that occurred during the past 15 yr we based our relocation process on the earthquake catalog of the taiwan central weather bureau seismic network cwbsn and made improvements in three aspects first we incorporated a large dataset of the s p times from 680 taiwan strong motion instrumentation pro gram tsmip stations distributed throughout the island of taiwan to improve the coverage of earthquakes on the island secondly we added 18 japan meteorological agency jma stations in the southern ryukyu island chain to enhance the station coverage for eastern offshore events especially around the subduction zone northeast of taiwan thirdly we adopted 3d vp and vp vs models in predicting the travel times of p and s waves the effectiveness of these improvements in earthquake re location can be seen in three aspects 1 the reduction in the residuals of p wave arrival times and s p times 2 a better understanding of the attenuation relationship between the peak ground acceleration and epicentral distance and 3 the geologically meaningful patterns of station corrections to p wave arrival times and s p times online material catalog of relocated earthquakes in taiwan from january 1991 to

remote triggering of non volcanic tremor around taiwan summary we perform a systematic survey of triggered deep non volcanic tremor beneath the central range cr in taiwan for 45 teleseismic earthquakes from 1998 to 2009 with mw 7 5 and epicentral distance 1000 km to the broad band station tpub triggered tremors are visually identified as bursts of high frequency 2 8 hz non impulsive and long duration seismic energy that are coherent among many seismic stations and modulated by the teleseismic surface waves out of the 45 earthquakes we identified nine teleseismic events associated with nine tremor sources in the southern and five in the northern cr most of the tremor sources are located within the depth range of 15 25 km in the lower crust above the moho we find that the amplitudes of the surface waves play an important role in determining the triggering potential and the apparent triggering threshold is 0 1 cm s 1 or 7 8 kpa however such threshold is partially controlled by the background noise level which could prevent weaker tremor triggered by surface waves with smaller amplitudes from being identified the amplitudes of the triggered tremor show a positive correlation with the amplitudes of the triggering surface waves consistent with the predictions by the clock advance model in addition to amplitudes other factors such as frequency contents and incidence angles also affect the triggering potential we find that intermediate period 30 10 s surface waves could trigger modulate tremors suggesting that long period 30 s surface waves are not always required in long range triggering tremors appear to be triggered by both love and rayleigh waves when the incidence angles are parallel to the strike of the cr all six events triggered tremor primarily during the rayleigh waves for strike normal incidence only the 2001 mw7 8 kunlun earthquake showed predominant love wave triggering this observation can be qualitatively explained by a simple coulomb failure for a left lateral shear on the low angle detachment fault beneath the southern cr

tremor asperities in the transition zone control evolution of slow earthquakes 1 slow earthquakes characterized by slow slip and associated seismic radiation called non volcanic tremor have been observed in major subduction zones worldwide they constitute an important mode of stress release for the fault s transition zone which lies directly downdip of the locked segment the nucleation zone of large damaging earthquakes however the depth of tremor in cascadia and the factors governing tremor generation and rupture propagation during slow quakes remain enigmatic here we develop a novel multibeam backprojection mbbp method to detect and locate tremor using multiple mini seismic arrays we apply this technique to image tremor activity during an entire ets cycle including a large episodic tremor and slip ets event in cascadia with unprecedented resolution our results suggest that the majority of the tremor is occurring near the plate interface we observe strongly heterogeneous tremor distribution with patches in the transition zone that experience repeated tremor episodes and produce most of the tremor the patches tens of kilometers in dimension behave like asperities on the fault plane during the large ets event rupture propagation velocity varies at least by a factor of five and seems to be modulated by these tremor asperities these observations support a model in which the transition zone is heterogeneous and consists of patches of asperities with surrounding regions slipping aseismically the asperities fail quasi periodically releasing stress and appear to regulate rupture propagation and tremor generation during slow earthquakes this study presents new observations revealing the tectonic characteristics of the transition zone controlling the generation and evolution of slow earthquakes

temporal variation of tectonic tremor activity in southern taiwan around the 2010 ml6 4 jiashian earthquake deep tectonic tremor which is extremely sensitive to small stress variations could be used to monitor fault zone processes during large earthquake cycles and aseismic processes before large earthquakes in this study we develop an algorithm for the automatic detection and location of tectonic tremor beneath the southern central range of taiwan and examine the spatio temporal relationship between tremor and the 4 march 2010 ml6 4 jiashian earthquake located about 20 km from active tremor sources we find that tremor in this region has a relatively short duration short recurrence time and no consistent correlation with surface gps data we find a short term increase in the tremor rate 19 days before the jiashian mainshock and around the time when the tremor rate began to rise one gps station recorded a flip in its direction of motion we hypothesize that tremor is driven by a slow slip event that preceded the occurrence of the shallower jiashian mainshock even though the inferred slip is too small to be observed by all gps stations our study shows that tectonic tremor may reflect stress variation during the pre nucleation process of a nearby earthquake

a history of the easter microplate 5 25 ma to present gloria and other geophysical data are used to interpret the morphology and tectonic pattern of the easter microplate we model magnetic anomaly data and calculate spreading rates for use in euler pole calculations we calculate three plate closure and best fit poles for nazca pacific nazca easter and pacific easter plate motions and compare the results with earthquake focal mechanisms and seismicity we use the three plate closure poles to rotate digital gloria and magnetic isochron data of the microplate and surrounding major plates back in time since the microplate s east rift first started to propagate northward at around 5 25 ma the microplate has evolved in two stages the first is from 5 25 ma to around 2 5 ma and involved continuous northward propagation of the east rift while the west rift became segmented along new transform faults as it adjusted to keep the overall nazca pacific velocities constant the transpressive northern boundary migrated with the east rift tip while the transtensional southern boundary remained more or less still at some time after 2 5 ma the east rift ceased northward propagation and the southwest rift began to open up along the transtensional pacific easter transform a convergent northern boundary formed involving southward thrusting of the nazca plate over the microplate no further nazca plate lithosphere was transferred from north of the microplate to the microplate interior and the pito deep region opened by pervasively rifting apart preexisting nazca plate lithosphere

the 11 april 2012 east indian ocean earthquake triggered large aftershocks worldwide although strong remote aftershocks are exceedingly rare their rate increased fivefold during the six days following the 2012 east indian ocean earthquake perhaps as a result of the strike slip nature of the 2012 event or a build up of close to failure nucleation sites

multiple diving waves and steep velocity gradients in the western taiwan coastal plain an investigation based on the taiger experiment seismic data collected during explosion experiments performed as part of the taiwan integrated geodynamics research taiger project provide an excellent opportunity to obtain high resolution images of the structure of the crust and upper mantle beneath taiwan the most significant feature observed at near source stations located on the western coastal plain in taiwan is high energy later arrivals these high amplitude multiples almost completely mask the lower amplitude signals seismic refraction and wide angle reflection from the deep crust the later arrivals are identified as free surface reflected multiples the nature and generation of these high energy multiple diving waves are demonstrated using synthetic examples their generation requires the presence of a steep velocity gradient in the shallow crust a detailed analysis of the observation data provided information on the velocity gradients in this region an accurate layer velocity model including the boundary orientation and its depth and velocity gradient was constructed based on a 1d waveform simulation and 2d seismic raytracing modeling for travel times the present results indicate that the thick sediment in the survey area dips shallowly to the east has a surface p wave velocity of graphic 1 and an average velocity gradient of about 0 72 s from the surface to 3 0 km depth the thick sediment of the 2d model shows lateral variations in velocity gradient increasing from west to east this velocity model may provide useful information for future data processing to reduce multiple diving waves with the aim of enhancing the deep surface refraction reflection signal the velocity gradient calculated for the thick sediment of the western coastal plain may require a revision of the regional seismic velocity model developed for southwestern taiwan to improve the accuracy of regional hypocenter determinations and to predict the strong ground motions produced by large earthquakes beneath this region 1 embed inline graphic 1 gif

nonvolcanic tremors deep beneath the san andreas fault we have discovered nonvolcanic tremor activity i e long duration seismic signals with no clear p or s waves within a transform plate boundary zone along the san andreas fault near cholame california the inferred epicentral region of the 1857 fort tejon earthquake moment magnitude 7 8 the tremors occur between 20 to 40 kilometers depth below the seismogenic zone the upper 15 kilometers of earth s crust where earthquakes occur and their activity rates may correlate with variations in local earthquake activity

remote triggering of tremor along the san andreas fault in central california received 30 august 2008 accepted 16 april 2009 published 18 july 2009 1 we perform a systematic survey of triggered tremor along the san andreas fault in central california for the 31 teleseismic earthquakes with mw 7 5 since 2001 we identify 10 teleseismic events associated with clear triggered tremor about 52 of the tremor is concentrated south of parkfield near cholame where ambient tremor has been identified previously and the rest is widely distributed in the creeping section of the san andreas fault north of parkfield tremor is generally initiated and is in phase with the love wave particle velocity however the pattern becomes complicated with the arrival of the rayleigh waves and sometimes tremor continues after the passage of the surface waves we identify two cases in which tremor is triggered during the teleseismic pkp phase these results suggest that while shear stress from the passage of the love waves plays the most important role in triggering tremor in central california other factors such as dilatational stresses from the rayleigh and p waves also contribute we also examine the ambient tremor occurrence rate before and after the teleseismic events and find a transient increase of stacked tremor rate during the passage of the teleseismic surface waves this observation implies that the occurrence time of tremor is temporally advanced by the dynamic stresses of the teleseismic waves the amplitude of the teleseismic waves correlates with the occurrence of triggered tremor and the inferred tremor triggering threshold is 2 3 kpa the relatively low triggering threshold indicates that the effective stress at the tremor source region is very low most likely due to near lithostatic fluid pressure

non volcanic tremor beneath the central range in taiwan triggered by the 2001 mw 7 8 kunlun earthquake summary non volcanic tremor nvt is an extended duration and non impulsive seismic signal observed away from volcanic regions although nvt has been found along the circum pacific subduction zones and the transform plate boundary in california it is not clear whether nvt occurs in other tectonic environments nvt is often associated with slow slip events and can be triggered instantaneously during the surface waves of teleseismic events however the underlying mechanisms of tremor generation remain mysterious here we show clear evidence of nvt beneath the central range cr in taiwan triggered by the 2001 m w 7 8 kunlun earthquake in northern tibet tremor occurs when the love wave displacement is to the southwest the lateral motion direction for the cr suggesting a simple frictional response to the driving force we hypothesize that tremor occurred on the weak basal detachment fault beneath the cr our observations indicate that tremor may exist at a wide range of active tectonic environments

tectonic tremor and lfes on a reverse fault in taiwan we compare low frequency earthquakes lfes from triggered and ambient tremor under the southern central range taiwan we apply the pagerank algorithm used by aguiar and beroza 2014 that exploits the repetitive nature of the lfes to find repeating lfes in both ambient and triggered tremor we use these repeaters to create lfe templates and find that the templates created from both tremor types are very similar to test their similarity we use both interchangeably and find that most of both the ambient and triggered tremor match the lfe templates created from either data set suggesting that lfes for both events have a common origin we locate the lfes by using local earthquake p wave and s wave information and find that lfes from triggered and ambient tremor locate to between 20 and 35 km on what we interpret as the deep extension of the chaochou lishan fault

precise tremor source locations and amplitude variations along the lower crustal central san andreas fault 1 we precisely locate 88 tremor families along the central san andreas fault using a 3d velocity model and numerous p and s wave arrival times estimated from seismogram stacks of up to 400 events per tremor family maximum tremor amplitudes vary along the fault by at least a factor of 7 with by far the strongest sources along a 25 km section of the fault southeast of parkfield we also identify many weaker tremor families which have largely escaped prior detection together these sources extend 150 km along the fault beneath creeping transitional and locked sections of the upper crustal fault depths are mostly between 18 and 28 km in the lower crust epicenters are concentrated within 3 km of the surface trace implying a nearly vertical fault a prominent gap in detectible activity is located directly beneath the region of maximum slip in the 2004 magnitude 6 0 parkfield earthquake

tremor bands sweep cascadia 1 during the slow slip events in cascadia and japan a well documented feature of nonvolcanic tremor nvt is its puzzling slow along strike migration but the cause possible implications and underlying physics of this long term tremor migration and its relationship with slow slip remain elusive here we use tremor data recorded by a dense seismic array in cascadia and apply a beam backprojection technique to map the spatiotemporal evolution of tremor with high resolution it reveals that elongated slip parallel bands of tremor activity illuminate the slipping part of the plate interface over the time scale of several hours and sweep cascadia along strike from south to north we propose that small changes in static stress due to slow slip in a section of the fault cause slip and associated nvt activity in the adjacent section and the resulting progressive along strike transfer of stress is responsible for the long term tremor migration during a slow slip event

ambient tremors in a collisional orogenic belt deep seated tectonic tremors have been regarded as an observation tied to interconnected fluids at depth which have been well documented in worldwide subduction zones and transform faults but not in a collisional mountain belt in this study we explore the general features of collisional tremors in taiwan and discuss the possible generation mechanism in the 4 year data we find 231 ambient tremor episodes with durations ranging from 5 to 30 min in addition to a coseismic slip induced stress change from nearby major earthquake increased tremor rate is also highly correlated with the active normal faulting earthquake swarms at the shallower depth both the tremor and earthquake swarm activities are confined in a small area where the high attenuation high thermal anomaly the boundary between high and low resistivity and localized veins on the surfaces distributed suggesting the involvement of fluids from metamorphic dehydration within the orogen

nonvolcanic tremor evolution and the san simeon and parkfield california earthquakes nonvolcanic tremors occur adjacent to locked faults and may be closely related to the generation of earthquakes monitoring of the san andreas fault in the parkfield california region revealed that after two strong earthquakes tremor activity increased in a nearly dormant tremor zone increased and became periodic in a previously active zone and has remained elevated and periodic for over 4 years static shear and coulomb stress increases of 6 to 14 kilopascals from these two earthquakes are coincident with sudden increases in tremor rates the persistent changes in tremor suggest that stress is now accumulating more rapidly beneath this part of the san andreas fault which ruptured in the moment magnitude 7 8 ft tejon earthquake of 1857

a global search for triggered tremor following the 2011 mw 9 0 tohoku earthquake abstract the 2011 m w 9 0 tohoku japan earthquake triggered deep tectonic tremor and shallow microearthquakes in numerous places worldwide here we conduct a systematic survey of triggered tremor in regions where ambient or triggered tremor has been previously identified tremor was triggered in the following regions south central alaska the aleutian arc shikoku in southwest japan the north island of new zealand southern oregon the parkfield cholame section of the san andreas fault in central california the san jacinto fault in southern california taiwan and vancouver island we find no evidence of triggered tremor in the calaveras fault in northern california one of the most important factors in controlling the triggering potential is the amplitude of the surface waves data examined in this study suggest that the threshold amplitude for triggering tremor is 0 1 cm s which is equivalent to a dynamic stress threshold of 10 kilopascals the incidence angles of the teleseismic surface waves also affect the triggering potentials of love and rayleigh waves the results of this study confirm that both love and rayleigh waves contribute to triggering tremor in many regions in regions where both ambient and triggered tremor are known to occur tremor triggered by the tohoku event generally occurred at similar locations with previously identified ambient and or triggered tremor further supporting the notion that although the driving forces of triggered and ambient tremor differ they share similar mechanisms we find a positive relationship between the amplitudes of the triggering waves and those of the triggered tremor which is consistent with the prediction of the clock advance model online material table of measured parameters and other information related to triggering nontriggering information and figures of observed seismograms

analysis of nonvolcanic tremor on the san andreas fault near parkfield ca using u s geological survey parkfield seismic array 1 reports by nadeau and dolenc 2005 that tremor had been detected near cholame valley spawned an effort to use upsar u s geological survey parkfield seismic array to study characteristics of tremor upsar was modified to record three channels of velocity at 40 50 sps continuously in january 2005 and ran for about 1 month during which time we recorded numerous episodes of tremor one tremor on 21 january at 0728 was recorded with particularly high signal levels as well as another episode 3 days later both events were very emergent had a frequency content between 2 and 8 hz and had numerous high amplitude short duration arrivals within the tremor signal here using the first episode as an example we discuss an analysis procedure which yields azimuth and apparent velocity of the tremor at upsar we then provide locations for both tremor episodes the emphasis here is how the tremor episode evolves twelve stations were operating at the time of recording slowness of arrivals was determined using cross correlation of pairs of stations the same method used in analyzing the main shock data from 28 september 2004 a feature of this analysis is that 20 s of the time series were used at a time to calculate correlation the longer windows resulted in more consistent estimates of slowness but lower peak correlations these values of correlation peaks of about 0 25 however are similar to that obtained for the s wave of a microearthquake observed peaks in slowness were traced back to source locations assumed to lie on the san andreas fault our inferred locations for the two tremor events cluster near the locations of previously observed tremor south of the cholame valley tremor source depths are in the 14 24 km range which is below the seismogenic brittle zone but above the moho estimates of error do not preclude locations below the moho however the tremor signal is very emergent but contains packets that are several times larger than the background tremor signal and lasts about 5 s these impulsive wavelets are similar to low frequency earthquakes signals seen in japan but appear to be broader band rather than just higher in low frequency energy they may be more appropriately called high energy tremor het het signals at upsar correlate well with the record of this event from station ghib of the hrsn borehole array at parkfield and hets typically have a higher cross correlation coefficient than the rest of the tremor event the amplitudes of a large het are consistent with a magnitude of 0 1 when compared with a m2 3 event that had about the same epicenter polarizations of the tremor episode at upsar are mostly just north of east both linearity and azimuth evolve over time suggesting a change in tremor source location over time and linearity is typically higher at the hets

spatial temporal patterns of seismic tremors in northern cascadia 1 we study in detail the two consecutive episodic tremor and slip ets events that occurred in the northern cascadia subduction zone during 2003 and 2004 for both sequences the newly developed source scanning algorithm ssa is applied to seismic waveform data from a dense regional seismograph array to determine the precise locations and origin times of seismic tremors in map view the majority of the tremors occurred in a limited band bounded approximately by the surface projections of the 30 km and 50 km depth contours of the plate interface the horizontal migration of tremor occurrence is from southeast to northwest with an average speed of 5 km d in cross section tremors in both sequences span a depth range of over 40 km across the interface with the majority occurring in the overriding continental crust in particular 50 55 of them are located within 2 5 km from the strong seismic reflector bands above the plate interface the lack of vertical migration implies that a slow diffusion process in the vertical direction cannot be responsible for tremor occurrences the source spectra of tremors clearly lack high frequency content 5 hz relative to local earthquakes we propose two possible models to explain the relationship between slip and tremors the first one regards ets tremors as the manifestation of hydroseismogenic processes in response to the temporal strain variation associated with the episodic slip along the lower portion of the plate interface downdip from the locked zone in the second model tremors and slip are associated with the same process along the same structure in a distributed deformation zone across the plate interface neither model can be dismissed conclusively at this stage

tremors along the queen charlotte margin triggered by large teleseismic earthquakes 1 we conduct a systematic search of tectonic tremors along the queen charlotte margin qcm in western canada triggered by distant earthquakes we identify triggered tremor as non impulsive high frequency signals coherent among several stations and coincident with passing surface waves so far the 2002 mw7 9 denali fault the 2004 mw9 2 sumatra and the 2011 mw9 1 tohoku oki earthquakes have triggered clear tremor in this region the 2010 mw8 8 maule chile and the 2012 mw8 6 sumatra earthquakes may have triggered but tremors in these two cases did not meet all of our criteria the triggered tremors are mostly located east of the queen charlotte fault in the southern portion of haida gwaii near the epicenter of the 28 october 2012 mw7 7 earthquake similar to the observations in other regions the triggered tremors were initiated by the love waves and continued during the subsequent rayleigh waves tremor bursts correlate with both the particle velocity and displacement of the love waves indicating they are triggered at either low angle thrust or vertical strike slip faults in addition we find that the triggering potential for the qcm is controlled by a combination of amplitude period and incident angles

tectonics of the easter plate abstract we present a new model for the easter plate in which rift propagation has resulted in the formation of a rigid plate between the propagating and dying ridges we use the distribution of earthquakes eleven new focal mechanisms and existing bathymetric and magnetic data to describe the tectonics of this area both the easter nazca and easter pacific euler poles are sufficiently close to the easter plate to cause rapid changes in rates and directions of motion along the boundaries the east and west boundaries are propagating and dying ridges the southwest boundary is a slow spreading ridge and the northern boundary is a complex zone of convergent and transform motion the easter plate may reflect the tectonics of rift propagation on a large scale where rigid plate tectonics requires boundary reorientation we use simple schematic models to illustrate the general features and processes which occur at plates resulting from large scale rift propagation

space time correlation of slip and tremor during the 2009 cascadia slow slip event 1 episodic tremor and slip ets involving transient deformations accompanied by emergent low frequency tremor occurs in subduction zones around the world ets events increase the shear stress on locked megathrusts and may potentially trigger damaging earthquakes despite the clear association of tremor and slip the physical relationship between them is unresolved tremor appears to result from slip on small asperities on the plate interface due to either creep on the surrounding fault or stress increases ahead of the propagating slow slip front previous studies of migrating slow slip events have not had sufficient spatial and temporal resolution to differentiate between these two models to address this we invert gps data from the august 2009 ets event in central cascadia for the space time evolution of fault slip rate we find a correlation in both space and time between tremor epicenters and the independently determined position of high fault slip rate this supports the first hypothesis that tremor asperities are loaded directly by slow slip rather than by stress increases ahead of the slip front and provides new insights into the mechanics of ets

seismotectonics of taiwan abstract high quality seismicity data and focal mechanism solutions obtained during 1973 1983 by the permanent taiwan telemetered seismographic network and several temporary local seismographic networks are used for a detailed study of the seismotectonics of the taiwan area seismicity distribution in southern taiwan clearly reveals an east dipping benioff zone which has a thickness of about 30 km and begins to deepen along 121 e at a dip angle of 55 60 the leading edge of this benioff zone reaches a depth of about 180 km between 21 n and 22 n but tapers off to a shallower depth of about 100 km from 22 n to 23 n the presence of this seismic zone implies that subduction of the south china sea plate under the philippine sea plate extends from luzon northward to about 23 n the position of the northern boundary of the south china sea plate as tentatively defined according to the seismicity distribution passes through southern taiwan from the offshore area in the taiwan strait west of kaohsiung in an east northeast direction to the taitung area where a triple junction probably lies seismicity is found to disappear abruptly below a certain depth in many parts of taiwan this phenomenon may be attributed to the frictional to quasiplastic transition in the crust or upper mantle comparison of shallow seismicity with surface faults and fractures shows that all areas of active shallow seismicity are marked by densely developed faults and fractures however the converse is not necessarily true this may be partly due to the relatively short duration of seismicity data and partly due to excessive weakening of some of the severely faulted and fractured areas finally focal mechanism solutions for west central taiwan and the kuangfu fuli area in eastern taiwan predominantly show a maximum horizontal compression in the se nw direction which can be related to collision between the eurasian and philippine sea plates however focal mechanism solutions for both the hualien area in eastern taiwan and the tainan area in southwestern taiwan show remarkable irregularities which may result from local tectonic complexities

automated detection and location of cascadia tremor 1 a new autonomous seismic location and detection methodology enables real time opportunities for high resolution spatio temporal monitoring of non volcanic tremor combining a unique cross correlation technique with epicenter clustering analysis in northern cascadia automatically yields thousands of tremor epicenters from the may 2008 episodic tremor and slip ets event while routinely detecting and locating inconspicuous inter ets tremor bursts although ets events in this area produce about two weeks of continuous tremor we find a nearly equal amount of tremor during the last 15 month inter ets period the resulting ets and inter ets epicenters occur in the slow slip region where the plate interface is 30 45 km deep and have a sharp well resolved updip boundary about 75 km east of the downdip edge of the seismogenic megathrust zone this ability to track tremor with high spatio temporal resolution facilitates automatic tremor monitoring and the mapping of the transition zone and regions of locked zone stress accumulation

testing small aperture array analysis on well located earthquakes and application to the location of deep tremor we have here analyzed local and regional earthquakes using array tech niques with the double aim of quantifying the errors associated with the estimation of propagation parameters of seismic signals and testing the suitability of a probabilistic location method for the analysis of nonimpulsive signals we have applied the zero lag cross correlation method to earthquakes recorded by three dense arrays in puget sound and vancouver island to estimate the slowness and back azimuth of direct p waves and s waves the results are compared with the slowness and back azimuth computed from the source location obtained by the analysis of data recorded by the pacific northwest seismic network pnsn this comparison has allowed a quanti fication of the errors associated with the estimation of slowness and back azimuth obtained through the analysis of array data the statistical analysis gives bp 10 and bs 8 as standard deviations for the back azimuth and sp 0 021 sec km and ss 0 033 sec km for the slowness results of the p and s phases respec tively these values are consistent with the theoretical relationship between slowness and back azimuth and their uncertainties we have tested a probabilistic source location method on the local earthquakes based on the use of the slowness estimated for two or three arrays without taking into account travel time information then we applied the probabilistic method to the deep nonvolcanic tremor recorded by the arrays during july 2004 the results of the tremor location using the probabilistic method are in good agreement with those obtained by other techniques thewide depth range of between 10 and 70 km and the source migration with time are evident in our results the method is useful for locating the source of signals characterized by the absence of pickable seismic phases

detecting deep tectonic tremor in taiwan with a dense array abstract we perform a systematic detection of deep tectonic tremor beneath the southern central range in taiwan using a dense small aperture seismic array deployed in february 2011 the array has been recording tectonic tremor nearly continuously for 134 days including tremor triggered by the 2011 m w 9 0 tohoku oki earthquake we use broadband frequency wavenumber beamforming and moving window grid search methods to compute array parameters for all continuous data and identify tremor as coherent nonimpulsive seismic signals with deep incidence angles the obtained array parameters closely match with those of relocated local earthquakes and triggered tremor bursts located by the waveform envelope correlation and clustering wecc method indicating the robustness of our array technique during the 134 day study period we detect tremor for 44 days with a total duration of 1481 min three to six times as long as the detection of tremor by the wecc method we find a relative quiescence in ambient tremor activity for about 20 days following the 2011 tohoku oki earthquake suggesting that dynamic stresses from the distant mainshock triggered most tremor close to failure resulting in a temporary lack of tremor activity in some cases we observe rapid tremor migration with a speed at the order of 40 50 km hr that is similar to the speed of fast tremor migration along dip on narrow streaks in japan and cascadia our results suggest that dense array techniques are capable of capturing detailed spatiotemporal evolutions of tremor behaviors in southern taiwan online material tables of station coordinates and tremor event parameters and figures of the moving window grid search test with local earthquakes tremor triggered by the 2011 tohoku oki earthquake and additional examples of detected ambient tremors

tectonic tremor beneath cuba triggered by the mw 8 8 maule and mw 9 0 tohoku oki earthquakes we provide additional evidence of tectonic tremor in cuba triggered by the 2010 m w 8 8 maule chile and the 2011 m w 9 0 tohoku oki japan earthquakes the high frequency tremor signals are modulated by long period surface waves similar to triggered tremors observed in other tectonically active regions we are able to locate two tremor sources triggered by the tohoku oki earthquake near the east west trending oriente fault around guantanamo bay the tremor around guantanamo bay was triggered primarily by a love wave of the maule mainshock and by both love and rayleigh waves of the tohoku oki mainshock this is consistent with frictional failures at a vertical strike slip fault under a coulomb failure criterion online material figure of envelope functions of tremor records and movies of spectogram and tremor correlation

analysis of crustal deformation in luzon philippines using geodetic observations and earthquake focal mechanisms we utilize regional gps velocities from luzon philippines with focal mechanism data from the harvard centroid moment tensor cmt catalog to constrain tectonic deformation in the complex plate boundary zone between the philippine sea plate and eurasia the sundaland block processed satellite imagery and digital elevation models are used with existing gravity anomaly seismicity and geologic maps to define a suite of six elastic blocks geodetic and focal mechanism data are inverted simultaneously to estimate plate rotations and fault locking parameters for each of the tectonic blocks and faults comprising luzon major tectonic structures that were found to absorb the plate convergence include the manila trench 20 100 mm yr 1 and east luzon trough 9 15 mm yr 1 philippine trench 29 34 mm yr 1 which accommodate eastward and westward subduction beneath luzon respectively the left lateral strike slip philippine fault 20 40 mm yr 1 and its northward extensions the northern cordillera fault 17 37 mm yr 1 transtension and the digdig fault 17 27 mm yr 1 transpression the macolod corridor a zone of active volcanism crustal thinning extension and extensive normal and strike slip faulting in southwestern luzon is associated with left lateral transtensional slip of 5 10 mm yr 1 the marikina fault which separates the central luzon block from the southwestern luzon block reveals 10 12 mm yr 1 of left lateral transpression our analysis suggests that much of the philippine fault and associated splays are locked to partly coupled while the manila and philippine trenches appear to be poorly coupled luzon is best characterized as a tectonically active plate boundary zone comprising six mobile elastic tectonic blocks between two active subduction zones the philippine fault and associated intra arc faults accommodate much of the trenchparallel component of relative plate motion 2006 elsevier b v all rights reserved

transition from oblique subduction to collision earthquakes in the southernmost ryukyu arc taiwan region tectonic characteristics of the region between taiwan and the southernmost ryukyu arc are inferred from a detailed analysis of local seismicity and source parameters of 62 recent earthquakes of 5 5 mb 6 6 five major seismogenic structures can be delineated the collision seismic zone csz the interface seismic zone isz the wadati benioff seismic zone wbsz the lateral compression seismic zone lcsz and the okinawa seismic zone osz in the csz located along the east coast of taiwan and offshore earthquake focal mechanisms show horizontal p axes distributed in two directions 287 10 and 333 16 possibly reflecting a strain partition associated with the relative plate convergence between the eurasia plate and the philippine sea plate the corresponding seismic strain tensor indicates a maximum compressive strain rate of 1 2 10 7 yr 1 along 293 and a comparable extension in vertical direction presumably resulted from plate collision in the region the geometry of the isz which is distorted significantly at its westernmost end can be approximated by a north dipping plane that is gradually pushed northward with increasing dip the seismogenic portion of the interface spans a short depth range from 10 km to 35 km a clear pattern of earthquake slip partition is observed the average slip vector residual is as large as 35 seismic strain patterns within the subducted philippine sea slab show predominantly downdip extension between 80 and 120 km and downdip compression at 270 km different from the pattern of strain segmentation observed for the rest of the ryukyu arc where the northern and southern portions are dominated by downdip extension and compression respectively owing to the large convergence obliquity the slab is descending at a rate significantly slower near taiwan than in the southern ryukyu thus we interpret the appearance of downdip extension within the subducted lithosphere as a combined result of oblique subduction and the slab s negative buoyancy a number of thrust or oblique strike slip earthquakes between isz and wbsz show a consistent pattern of lateral compression with p axes oriented roughly parallel to the local strike of the trench arc system they are probably due to the compressive strain originated from the collision and transmitted laterally within the lithosphere shallow normal faulting earthquakes show successive rotation of t axes from approximately n s in the okinawa trough to approximately e w in northeast taiwan possibly as a result of interaction between the extension from the opening of the okinawa trough and the compression from collision one normal event january 18 1991 mb 5 9 occurred in the central range with t axis roughly parallel to the structural trend of taiwan implying that the nature of the orogeny in taiwan has changed from thin skinned deformation to lithospheric collision involving the whole crust and uppermost mantle

tectonics and evolution of the juan fernandez microplate at the pacific nazca antarctic triple junction in this study magnetic and bathymetric data from an r v endeavor survey are combined with earthquake mechanism studies to produce a tectonic model for the juan fernandez microplate at the pacific nazca antarctic triple junction magnetic lineations along the east ridge of the microplate fan to the south indicating that the nazca juan fernandez pole is near the northern end of this feature relative motions of the juan fernandez pacific nazca antarctic four plate system are determined using relative plate motion inversions the resulting tectonic model predicts that the northern boundary of the juan fernandez microplate is a zone of compression and that the west ridge and southwestern boundary are spreading obliquely the southeastern boundary is predicted to be obliquely divergent but present data fail to constrain its geometry we also present a schematic evolutionary model which relates the formation of the juan fernandez microplate to differential spreading rates at the triple junction and discuss related complexities the future evolution of the fourplate system depends on whether one or both ridges remain active

widespread triggering of nonvolcanic tremor in california we identified seven locations on or near the transform plate boundary in california where nonvolcanic tremor was triggered by the 2002 denali earthquake this result implies that the conditions essential for nonvolcanic tremor exist in a range of tectonic environments models explaining tremor typically require conditions endemic to subduction zones that is high temperatures and fluid pressures because previously tremor was nearly exclusively documented in subduction zones the absence of tremor in geothermal areas is inconsistent with such models additionally we found no correlation between creeping or locked faults and tremor contrary to predictions of frictional models of tremor

an integrated perspective of the continuum between earthquakes and slow slip phenomena slow slip a mechanism by which faults can relieve stress was thought to be distinct from earthquakes however a global review of slow slip phenomena suggests that instead there is a continuum between the two types of event

remotely triggered earthquakes in south central tibet following the 2004 mw 9 1 sumatra and 2005 mw 8 6 nias earthquakes