Analysis of spatiotemporal variation in b-value for the Sunda arc using high precision earthquake location

Abstract

The Sunda arc is one of the most active tectonic regions, which has a complex tectonic setting due to different tectonic regimes and subduction geometry along this arc. We analyzed variation in b-value for this region in order to obtain better information regarding the state of stress in this region. For the first step, we relocated earthquake hypocenters taken from the BMKG catalog for the period 2009 – 2015 by employing a teleseismic double-difference (DD) relocation method and using a 3D velocity model. There are 10,440 earthquakes that were successfully relocated with greatly reduced residual errors. Based on its tectonic feature and earthquake distribution, we divided the study area into 8 regions, i.e. northern Sumatra, central Sumatra, southern Sumatra, Sunda strait, western Java, eastern Java, lesser Sunda islands, and Sunda-Banda transition zone. For b-value analysis we combined the BMKG catalog with the International Seismological Centre (ISC) catalog from 2006 to 2009 to obtain a longer time period. We analyzed the spatial variation in b-value for western sunda arc and found a low b-value that matches well with earthquake locations.