Evolution of the vigorous 2006 swarm in Zakynthos (Greece) and probabilities for strong aftershocks occurrence

Abstract

A multiplet of moderate-magnitude earthquakes (5.1 ≤ M ≤ 5.6) took place in Zakynthos Island and offshore area (central Ionian Islands, Greece) in April 2006. The activity in the first month occupied an area of almost 35 km long, striking roughly NNW–SSE, whereas aftershocks continued for several months, decaying with time but persisting at the same place. The properties of the activated structure were investigated with accurate relocated data and the available fault plane solutions of some of the stronger events. Both the distribution of seismicity and fault plane solutions show that thrusting with strike-slip motions are both present in high-angle fault segments. The segmentation of the activated structure could be attributed to the faulting complexity inherited from the regional compressive tectonics. Investigation of the spatial and temporal behavior of seismicity revealed possible triggering of adjacent fault segments that may fail individually, thus preventing coalescence in a large main rupture. In an attempt to forecast occurrence probabilities of six of the strong events (Mw ≥ 5.0), estimations were performed following the restricted epidemic-type aftershock sequence model, applied to data samples before each one of these strong events. Stochastic modeling was also used to identify “quiescence” periods before the examined aftershocks. In two out of the six cases, real aftershock rate did decrease before the next strong shock compared to the modeled one. The latter results reveal that rate decrease is not a clear precursor of strong shocks in the swarm and no quantitative information, suitable to supply probability gain, could be extracted from the data.