[1] In West Bohemia, central Europe, during October 2008 an earthquake swarm of 25,000 shocks with a maximum event of M L $ 3.7-3.8 occurred at depths of 7-11 km. In 2007, annual GPS campaigns were launched. During the co-seismic phase, displacements of a few centimeters were detected at GPS sites. Maximum displacement was revealed at the KOPA site, which subsided by 167 mm. The epicentral area is covered by eluvium of 4-10 m thick, and is located in undulating pastures and well-forested valleys where visible surface soil effects could not be observed. To test possible fault manifestations, rough geomorphologic, geoelectric, and geochemical surveys were performed. GPS and seismic data, with geologic materials, were used to build a forward model for surface displacements, crustal deformations, and shear and normal stress fields. The fields enabled us to better determine crustal deformations and stresses that appeared within the seismic cycle, during the pre-, co-, and post-seismic phases. During the co-seismic phase, modeled fault motions along N-S faults located within the epicentral zone reached 0.6-1 mm/day. Possible structural block rotations were comprised of these motions. A dominant role for stress accumulation, release, and relaxation was assigned to the Mariánské Lázně fault zone and the Nový Kostel zone. Strain loads slowly, and when local PT conditions with an action of deep magmatic fluids reach instability, the strain is released and stress balancing occurs. The process leads to the reversible motions known for silent earthquakes. A forward crustal deformation model for West Bohemia is also presented within.
S U M M A R YWe have inverted the peak amplitudes of direct P waves of 45 micro-earthquakes with magnitudes between M = 1.4 and 2.9, which occurred during and after the 2003 massive fluid injection in the GPK3 borehole of the Soultz-sous-Forêts Hot Dry Rock facility. These events were recorded by a surface seismic network of 15 stations operated by the Ecole et Observatoire des Sciences de la Terre, University of Strasbourg. The unconstrained moment tensor (MT) expression of the mechanism was applied, allowing the description of a general system of dipoles, that is, both double-couple (DC) and non-DC sources, as tensile fractures. The mechanisms of all but one event are dominantly DCs with a few per cent additional components at the most. We have checked carefully the reliability of the MT retrieval in bootstrap trials eliminating some data, by simulating the mislocation of the hypocentre and by applying simplified velocity models of the area in constructing Green's functions. In some of the trials non-DC components amounting to several tens of per cent appear, but the F-test classifies them as insignificant. Even the only micro-earthquake with an exceptionally high non-DC mechanism cannot be classified unambiguously-the F-test assigns similar significance to the pure DC solution. The massive dominance of the DC indicates the shear-slip as the mechanism of the micro-earthquakes investigated. The mechanisms display large variability and are of normal dip-slip, oblique normal to strike-slip types. The T-axes are fairly stable, being concentrated subhorizontally roughly in the E-W direction. On the contrary, the P-axes are ill constrained varying in the N-S direction from nearly vertical to nearly horizontal, which points to heterogeneous stress in the Soultz injected volume. This is in agreement with the stress pattern from in situ measurements: the minimum stress axis is well constrained to E-W, whereas the maximum and intermediate stress values are close to one another, enabling the ambiguity of the P-axis direction. We found no significant dependence of source mechanisms either on magnitudes or depths. The time-space distribution of the events analysed suggests that the injection activated two segments of the natural faults existing in the area (I and II in our notation) showing different source mechanism patterns. The dip-slip regime is characteristic of fault segment I where the seismicity occurred during and also after injection, whereas the strike-slip regime prevails in segment II where the seismicity was triggered only after the injection shut in. This indicates that the tensile fractures, which are assumed to be created during injection, may have occurred on a smaller scale than the pure shear micro-earthquakes investigated.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.