Detecting Volcano-Tectonic Earthquakes at the Tatun Volcano Group in Taiwan with Dense Arrays

Abstract:

The Tatun Volcano Group (TVG) is located at the northernmost tip of the island of Taiwan. Although TVG have been erupted 0.1-0.2 Ma ago and are considered being extinct, some recent studies suggest that they are active or dormant volcanos. We perform a systematic detection of volcano-tectonic earthquakes beneath TVG using three dense, small-aperture seismic arrays, which were deployed for six months in 2012. We use broadband frequency-wavenumber beam forming and moving-window grid-search methods to compute array parameters for all nearly continuous data and identify volcano-tectonic earthquakes. We detect much more events than that listed in the TVG volcano-tectonic earthquake catalog, about 50 events per month. Our results suggest that dense array techniques are capable of capturing detailed spatiotemporal evolution of volcano-tectonic earthquake behaviours at TVG, and also help to better understand the source mechanism of the brittle, uppermost part of the crust to the combined effect of the local hydrothermal fluid pressure and the regional stress field in the volcanic environment.