A Catalog of Moment Tensors and Source-type Characterization for Small Events at Uturuncu Volcano, Bolivia

Abstract:

We present a catalog of full seismic moment tensors for 63 events from Uturuncu volcano in Bolivia. The events were recorded during 2011-2012 in the PLUTONS seismic array of 24 broadband stations. Most events had magnitudes between 0.5 and 2.0 and did not generate discernible surface waves; the largest event was Mw 2.8. For each event we computed the misfit between observed and synthetic waveforms, and we also used first-motion polarity measurements to reduce the number of possible solutions. Each moment tensor solution was obtained using a grid search over the six-dimensional space of moment tensors. For each event we characterize the variation of moment tensor source type by plotting the misfit function in eigenvalue space, represented by a lune. We plot the optimal solutions for the 63 events on the lune in order to identify three subsets of the catalog: (1) a set of isotropic events, (2) a set of tensional crack events, and (3) a swarm of events southeast of the volcanic center that appear to be double couples. The occurrence of positively isotropic events is consistent with other published results from volcanic and geothermal regions. Several of these previous results, as well as our results, cannot be interpreted within the context of either an oblique opening crack or a crack-plus-double-couple model; instead they require a multiple-process source model. Our study emphasizes the importance of characterizing uncertainties for full moment tensors, and it provides strong support for isotropic events at Uturuncu volcano.