2001 August earthquake swarm at Shadwan Island, Gulf of Suez, Egypt

Abstract

The earthquake swarm that struck Shadwan Island at the entrance of the Gulf of Suez in 2001 August included 408 events. Almost all of these events (94 per cent) were microearthquakes and only 6 per cent had small measurable magnitudes (5.0 > ML≥ 3.0). Most of the earthquakes were weak and followed each other so closely in time that they could not be identified at more distant stations. The fault plane solutions of the strongest events of the swarm show almost identical focal mechanisms, predominately normal faulting with a significant sinistral strike-slip component for nodal planes trending NW–SE. A comparison with the mechanisms of the 1969 and 1972 events which took place 20 km north of the swarm epicentral region shows similarities in faulting type and orientation of nodal planes. The azimuths of T-axes determined from focal mechanisms in this study are oriented in the NNE–SSW direction. This direction is consistent with the present-day stress field derived from borehole breakouts in the southern Gulf of Suez and the last phase of stress field changes in the Late Pleistocene, as well as with recent GPS results. The source parameters of the largest (ML≥ 3.0) events of the 2001 August Shadwan swarm have been estimated from the P-wave spectra of the Egyptian National Seismograph Network (ENSN). Averaging of the values obtained at different stations shows relatively similar source parameters, including a fault length of 0.65 ≤L≤ 2 km, a seismic moment of 7.1 × 1012≤Mo≤ 3.0 × 1014 N m and a stress drop of 0.4 ≤Δσ≤ 10 bar.