Time-frequency scale decomposition of tectonic tremor signals for space-time reconstruction of tectonic tremor sources

Abstract:

Seismic radiation associated with transient deformations along the faults and subduction interfaces encompasses a variety of events, i.e., tectonic tremors, low-frequency earthquakes (LFE), very low-frequency earthquakes (VLFs), and slow-slip events (SSE), with a wide range of seismic moment and characteristic durations. Characterizing in space and time the complex sources of these slow earthquakes, and their relationship with background seismicity and large earthquakes generation, is of great importance for understanding the physics and mechanics of the processes of active deformations along the plate interfaces.

We present here first developments towards a methodology for: (1) extracting the different frequency and scale components of observed tectonic tremor signal, using advanced time-frequency and time-scale signal representation such as Gabor transform scheme based on, e.g. Wilson bases or Modified Discrete Cosine Transform (MDCT) bases; (2) reconstructing their corresponding potential sources in space and time, using the array method of Poiata et al. (2015).

The methodology is assessed using a dataset of tectonic tremor episodes from Shikoku, Japan, recorded by the Hi-net seismic network operated by NIED. We illustrate its performance and potential in providing activity maps - associated to different scale-components of tectonic tremors – that can be analyzed statistically to improve our understanding of tremor sources and scaling, as well as their relation with the background seismicity.