Seismic Swarms at Paricutin Volcano Area. Magmatic Intrusion or Tectonic Seismicity?

Abstract:

We relocate a seismic swarm with more than 700 earthquakes that took place between May and June 2006 in the Paricutin volcano area, Mexico inside of the Michoacan monogenetic volcanic field. This seismic swarm was recorded by the project “Mapping the Riviera Subduction Zone” (MARS), a temporary seismic network that was installed in the states of Jalisco, Colima and Michoacán between January 2006 and June 2007. Previously seismic swarms in the area were reported in the years of 1997, 1999 and 2000. For one that took place in the year of 1997 the Servicio Sismologico Nacional deployed a local network in the area, they conclude that the source of the seismicity was tectonic with depths between 18 and 12 km. The episodes of 1999 and 2000 were reported as similar to the 1997 swarm. A previous analysis of the 2006 swarm concludes that the depth of seismicity migrates from 9 to 5 km and was originated by a magmatic intrusion. We did a relocation of this swarm reading all the events and using Hypo71 and the P-wave velocity model used by the Jalisco Seismic and Acelerometric Network; a waveform analysis using cross-correlation method was also carried out. We obtained 15 earthquakes families with a correlation factor equal or greater than 0.79 and composed focal mechanism for each family. These families present a migration in depth beginning at 16 km and ended at 9 km. Our results agrees with a magmatic intrusion, but not so shallow as the previous study of the 2006 swarm.