Published June 16, 2013 | Supplemental Material + Published
Journal Article Open

Low-frequency earthquakes in the Mexican Sweet Spot

Abstract

We use data from the Meso‐America Subduction Experiment to detect and locate low‐frequency earthquakes (LFEs) in the Mexican subduction zone. We use visually‐identified templates to perform a network waveform correlation search that produced ~17,000 robustly detected LFEs that form 15 distinct families. Stacking an LFE family's corresponding detections results in seismograms with high signal‐to‐noise ratios and clear P and S wave arrivals; we use these travel times to locate the sources. The resulting locations superpose a previously identified region of permanent non‐volcanic tremor (NVT) activity. Husker et al. (2012) called this region a Sweet Spot, suggesting that the local conditions are adequate to continuously generate NVT. The LFE hypocenters have been located at a depth of 40–45 km in an area that is surrounding the upper slab‐plate interface. We characterize their focal mechanisms by comparing their stacked seismograms to synthetic seismograms. This analysis reveals a common low‐dipping focal mechanism.

Additional Information

© 2013 American Geophysical Union. Issue Online: 03 July 2013; Version of Record online: 13 June 2013; Accepted manuscript online: 16 May 2013; Manuscript accepted: 13 May 2013; Manuscript revised: 12 May 2013; Manuscript received: 15 April 2013. We thank the California Institute of Technology for the Meso‐American Subduction Experiment data set used in this study. We also thank Aldo Zollo and Claudio Satriano for their program that was used to calculate the theoretical travel times. This work was supported by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (France) under the contract RA0000CO69 (G‐GAP), by the European Research Council under the contract FP7 ERC Advanced grant 227507 (WHISPER), and by the PAPIIT 110611–3 grant (UNAM Mexico). Several figures were made with Generic Mapping Tools [Wessel and Smith, 1998]. The Editor thanks Michael Bostock and an anonymous reviewer for their assistance in evaluating this paper.

Attached Files

Published - grl.50561.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287a.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287a.tex

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287ap01.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287ap02.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287ap03.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287ap04.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287ap05.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287ap06.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287ap07.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287ap08.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287ap09.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287ap10.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287ap11.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287ap12.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287ap13.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287ap14.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287ap15.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287ap16.pdf

Supplemental Material - 2013gl056287ap17.pdf

Supplemental Material - readme.txt

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Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
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