4.7 Article

Cataloging Tectonic Tremor Energy Radiation in the Cascadia Subduction Zone

Journal

JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-SOLID EARTH
Volume 126, Issue 10, Pages -

Publisher

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1029/2021JB022523

Keywords

Cascadia; subduction zone; tremor

Funding

  1. USGS Advanced Research Computing

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The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network has been detecting and locating tectonic tremor in the Cascadia subduction zone for the past 12 years, resulting in a catalog of over 500,000 tremor epicenters. A new methodology for routine tremor detection in the region was presented, with a focus on the southern edge of the subduction zone where a newly identified tremor source was located. The study found differences in tremor activity between northern and southern Cascadia, with the highest energy rates occurring in the north.
For the past similar to 12 years the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network has been automatically detecting and locating tectonic tremor across the Cascadia subduction zone, resulting in a catalog of more than 500,000 tremor epicenters to date, which has served as a valuable resource for tremor and slip research. This manuscript presents an updated methodology for routine tremor detection in Cascadia and a new catalog of over 180,000 tremor epicenters including amplitudes detected along the subduction zone margin from 2017 to 2021. The events are detected via cross-correlation of continuous vertical envelope data of 128 stations from northern California to northern Vancouver Island. The modified approach results in less scatter and a 55% increase in detected epicenters than previously observed, as well as a newly identified tremor source offset updip from the main tremor and slip region at the southern edge of the subduction zone. Radiated seismic energy in the 1.5-5 Hz band is used to assign epicenters an energy magnitude (M-eL), which is calibrated to the M-L of local earthquakes. Southern Cascadia is most active, but the highest tremor energy rates occur in northern Cascadia. Tremor in central Cascadia is systematically weaker and less frequent. Individual epicenter magnitudes range from similar to 0.5-2 and spatiotemporally cluster into 1,060 swarms with cumulative M-eL ranging from similar to 0.8 to 3.7. The swarms reflect underlying slow slip events and occur with an earthquake-like energy distribution with a b value similar to 1. Tremor epicenters, however, follow a tapered Gutenberg-Richter distribution with high b values, suggesting individual tremor bursts and their constituent low-frequency earthquakes are fault-dimension limited.

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