Imaging active faults in a region of distributed deformation from joint focal mechanism and hypocenter clustering: Application to western Iberia

Abstract:

Mainland Portugal, on the SW edge of the European continent, is located directly north of the boundary between the Eurasian and Nubian plates. It lies in a region of slow lithospheric deformation, which has generated some of the largest earthquakes in Europe, both intraplate (mainland) and interplate (offshore). The seismicity of mainland Portugal and its adjacent offshore has been repeatedly classified as diffuse. We analyse the instrumental earthquake catalog for western Iberia, enriched with data from recent dense broadband deployments. We show that although the plate boundary south of Portugal is diffuse, in that deformation is accommodated along several distributed faults rather than along one long linear plate boundary, the seismicity itself is not diffuse. Rather, when located using high quality data, earthquakes collapse into well-defined clusters and lineations.

We then present a new joint focal mechanism and hypocenter cluster algorithm that is able to extract coherent information between hypocenter locations and focal mechanisms. We apply the method to the Azores-western Mediterranean region, with emphasis on western Iberia. In addition to identifying well-known seismo-tectonic features, the joint clustering algorithm identifies eight new clusters of earthquakes with a good match between the directions of epicentre lineations and focal mechanism fault planes. These clusters may signal single active faults or wider fault zones accommodating a consistent type of faulting. Mainland Portugal is dominated by strike-slip faulting, consistent with the NNE-SSW and WNW-ESE oriented lineations. The region offshore SW Iberia displays clusters that are either predominantly strike-slip or reverse, indicating slip partitioning.

This work shows that the study of low-magnitude earthquakes using dense seismic deployments is a powerful tool to study lithospheric deformation in slowly deforming regions, where high-magnitude earthquakes occur with long recurrence intervals.