Seismic activity before and after the eruption of Kuchinoerabujima in 2015

Abstract:

Shindake, on Kuchinoerabujima, in the Ryukyu Islands, south of Kyusyu, Japan, erupted at 09:59 JST on 29 May 2015. This eruption is considered to have been a phreato-magmatic eruption, according to the Coordinating Committee for Prediction of Volcanic Eruption in Japan. As characteristic seismic activities before and after the eruption, an A-type event (Mw 2.3) occurred in the northwestern part of Shindake on 23 May, and numerous volcanic events occurred in and around Shindake just after the eruption. The frequency–magnitude distribution (b-value) of earthquakes is commonly high in volcanic areas. It is also known that high b-values in volcanic areas are primarily responsible for material heterogeneity, low shear strength, and high thermal gradients. These facts suggest that the b-value distribution can be used as a tool to locate active magma chambers. It is thus important to determine the distribution of hypocenters precisely and to investigate the b-value distribution on Kuchinoerabujima. We used a data set of the Japan Meteorological Agency and the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, and a half-space with Vp = 2.5 km/s as a velocity structure. For the determination of hypocenters, we used the hypomh (Hirata and Matsu’ura 1987) and hypoDD (Waldhauser and Ellsworth 2000) algorithms. This revealed that many estimated hypocenters were distributed in and around the vent at a depth of ~5 km under Shindake before and after the eruption. A volume of high b (>1.2) was locally observed in the eastern part at depths of 1.0–2.5 km below Shindake before the eruption and another was widely observed at depths of 2.0–4.0 km after the eruption. By comparing these findings with other observation results, we may be able to obtain a clear image of the active magma chamber.