Two Decades of Seismic Monitoring by WEBNET: Disclosing a Lifecycle of an Earthquake Swarm Zone

Abstract:

The area of West Bohemia/Vogtland in western Eger Rift is typified by earthquake swarm activity with maximum magnitudes not exceeding ML 5. The seismicity is dominated by the area near Novy Kostel where earthquakes cluster along a narrow and steeply dipping focal zone of 8 km length that strikes about N-S in the depth range 7-11 km. Detailed seismic monitoring has been carried out by the WEBNET seismic network since 1992. During that period earthquake swarms with several mainshocks exceeding magnitude level ML 3 took place in 2000, 2008 and 2011. These swarms were characteristic by episodic character where the activity of individual episodes overlapped in time and space. Interestingly, the rate of activity of individual swarms increased with each subsequent swarm; the 2000 swarm being the slowest and the 2011 swarm the most rapid one. In 2014 the character of seismicity has changed from a swarm-like activity to a mainshock-aftershock activity. Already three mainshocks has occurred since May 2014; the ML 3.6 event of May 24, the ML 4.5 event of May 31 and the ML 3.5 event of August 3. All these events were followed by a short aftershock sequence of one to four days duration. All three events exceeded the following aftershocks by more than one magnitude level and none of these mainshocks were preceded by foreshocks, which differentiates this activity from the preceding swarm seismicity. Interestingly, the hypocenters of the mentioned earthquake swarms and mainshock-aftershock sequences share a common fault zone and overlap significantly.

We present detailed analysis of precise hypocenter locations and statistical characteristics of the activity in order to find the origin of different behavior of seismic activity, which results in either earthquake swarms or mainshock-aftershock activity.