SUMMARY The SW Iberian margin is well known for its complex tectonic setting and crustal structure and by the occurrence of moderate magnitude earthquakes and some great tsunamigenic earthquakes. Fortunately, many seismic reflection and refraction profiles have been carried out, providing detailed information about the crustal structure of the main geologic domains in this region. These studies show a first-order variation due to the transition from oceanic to continental domain, large-scale heterogeneities within the crust and an irregular Moho topography. Routine earthquake locations in this area have been usually computed using a general 1-D velocity model which is clear that cannot account for such a heterogeneous structure. In addition, regional seismic stations used to locate the Gulf of Cadiz seismicity are on land and far away to the east, implying large azimuthal gaps and distances. In this context, a 3-D approach seems necessary to properly solve the crustal velocity field and improve earthquake location in this area. With this purpose, we present a new digital 3-D P-wave velocity distribution for the crust and uppermost mantle derived from previously published controlled-source seismic experiments carried out in SW Iberia and the Gulf of Cadiz over the last 40 yr. We have reviewed more than 50 wide-angle and multichannel seismic reflection and refraction profiles and digitized the most significant published 2-D seismic velocity models, performing an updated compilation of crustal parameters (P-wave velocities and geometry and depth of the main crustal interfaces). These velocities as a function of position and depth have been interpolated using ordinary kriging algorithm to obtain, in the form of a regular georeferenced 20 × 20 × 1 km grid spacing, a high-resolution 3-D P-wave velocity distribution for the crust and uppermost mantle and a continuous Moho depth map of the whole area of this study (33°N–41°N latitude and 15°W–5°W longitude). Since current seismic location tools allow the implementation of 3-D grid structures, we have applied our 3-D model to relocate a selection of moderate earthquakes occurred in the studied region using a probabilistic nonlinear method. In the Gulf of Cadiz area the probabilistic approximation provides maximum likelihood hypocentres located within the uppermost mantle with the majority of depths ranging between 20 and 45 km. This model would subsequently be implemented at the Spanish Seismic Network for the routine relocation of the seismicity of the area.
The 2020–2021 Santa Fe seismic sequence is the first well-instrumented and widely felt seismic series occurred in the Granada basin during the Spanish instrumental period since the 1979 Fuente Vaqueros seismic series and the 1955–1956 Armilla and Purchil destructive earthquakes. It began in December 2020 with an Mw 3.7 earthquake followed by five Mw>4 earthquakes between 23 and 28 January 2021 and a long sequence of aftershocks during the next four months. Over six months later, on 12 August, another large earthquake of magnitude 4.5 stroke the area to the southwest of Santa Fe city where the previous shocks occurred. This seismic sequence offers a unique opportunity to study the seismic activity in this region—one of the most seismically active zones and with the highest seismic hazard in the Iberian Peninsula. The wide station coverage and good-quality data available allows us to perform high-precision absolute and relative relocations and to obtain the seismic moment tensor (MT) and focal mechanism of the largest earthquakes. Relocation results reveal a clustered distribution of the seismicity between Santa Fe and Pinos Puente faults, focused on a depth range between 2 and 5 km. Hypocenters follow a near-vertical pattern, and Mw>4 events display a northeast–southwest-dipping trend that seems to fit Pinos Puente fault plane. However, regional MT solutions show predominant normal fault mechanisms, with minor oblique component but with strike and dip orientations more compatible to Santa Fe fault. To explain this apparent discrepancy with the known mapped active faults, we propose a change in dip of Santa Fe fault plane from near vertical at shallow depths, bended below the first kilometers, to a possible fault splay in depth compatible with the known geologic structure of the area.
Summary This work presents a new methodology designed to estimate the slowness vector in large-aperture sparse Ocean Bottom Seismometer (OBS) arrays. The Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) is used to convert the original incoherent traces that span a large array, into coherent impulse functions adapted to the array aperture. Subsequently, these impulse functions are beamformed in the frequency domain to estimate the slowness vector. We compare the performance of this new method with that of an alternative solution, based on the fast Short-Term Average/Long-Term Average algorithm and with a method based on the trace envelope, with the ability to derive a very fast detection and slowness vector estimation of seismic signal arrivals. The new array methodology has been applied to data from an OBS deployment with an aperture of 80 km and an interstation-distance of about 40 km, in the vicinity of Cape Saint Vincent (SW Iberia). A set of 17 regional earthquakes with magnitudes 2 < mbLg < 5, has been selected to test the capabilities of detecting and locating regional seismic events with the Cape Saint Vincent OBS Array. We have found that there is a good agreement between the epicentral locations obtained previously by direct search methods and those calculated using the slowness vector estimations resulting from application of the CWT technique. We show that the proposed CWT method can detect seismic signals and estimate the slowness vector from regional earthquakes with high accuracy and robustness under low signal-to-noise ratio conditions. Differences in epicentral distances applying direct search methods and the CWT technique are between 1 km and 21 km with an average value of 12 km. The back-azimuth differences range from 1° to 7° with an average of 1.5° for the P-wave and ranging from 1° to 10° with an average of 3° for the S-wave.
Integrated Seismic Program (ISP) is a graphical user interface designed to facilitate and provide a user-friendly framework for performing diverse common and advanced tasks in seismological research. ISP is composed of five main modules for earthquake location, time–frequency analysis and advanced signal processing, implementation of array techniques to estimate the slowness vector, seismic moment tensor inversion, and receiver function computation and analysis. In addition, several support tools are available, allowing the user to create an event database, download data from International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks services, inspect the background noise, and compute synthetic seismograms. ISP is written in Python3, supported by several open-source and/or publicly available tools. Its modular design allows for new features to be added in a collaborative development environment.
<p>The Alboran Sea is a complex tectonic region in the westernmost Mediterranean Sea, dominated by the present-day NW-SE convergence between Eurasia and Nubia plates. This compression regime accomodates long strike-slip active fault systems, together with several inverse structures, crossing the Alboran crust in a NE-SW trending shear deformation belt which mainly controlls the shallow seismicity in the area. In fact, the southern sector of the Alboran domain has experienced two large earthquakes in the last two decades, the Mw 6.3 2004 Alhoceima and the Mw 6.4 2016 Alboran events. Since mid-april 2021, and over the following 20 months, tens of moderate-magnitude shallow earthquakes (4&#8804;Mw&#8804;5.3, h<20 km) have been registered in this area, to the northwest of Melilla, between the 2016 main shock and the African coast. The two largest events, a Mw 5.1 on August 28, 2021 and a Mw 5.3 on May 20, 2022, were widely felt in Melilla city (maximum EMS-98 intensities of IV and IV-V, respectively) and along the southern Spanish and the Moroccan coasts. These moderate seismicity occurs together with thousands of low-magnitude events (M<3) in a swarm-type distribution, in contrast to previous seismic sequences in 2004 and 2016 which showed a more typical foreshock-mainshock-aftershock pattern. An accurate hypocentral location of this seismicity is a key point to better image the seismicity distribution and rupture area and, hence, to improve our knowledge of the active tectonics of this region, contributing to improve seismic and tsunami hazard assessments. In this study we perfom a high-precision relocation of a selected good-quality subset of moderate-magnitude earthquakes of the 2021-2022 seismic sequence and we compare them to a similar set of relocated earthquakes of the 2004 and 2016 series, using all the available seismic data. We apply a non-linear probabilistic location algorithm jointly with a 3-D velocity model for the Alboran-Betic-Rif system, to account for differences in wave propagation in the laterally heterogeneous crust. This approach is a powerful tool to improve the hypocentral parametres.</p>
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