Optimum station distribution to monitor seismic activity of Teide Volcano, Tenerife, Canary Islands

Abstract

Optimization and location capability methods have been applied to the design of a seismic monitoring network composed of five stations to be installed around Teide-Pico Viejo stratovolcano in Tenerife, Canary Islands. In terms of location errors coming from the relative spatial distribution of seismic stations and hypocenters, the optimum network provides an improvement in epicentral location capability of 60% compared with a preliminary choice of five stations, while its improvement in focal depth determination is between 30% and 60%, depending on the average focal depth of seismic activity. Network enlargement to six stations, adding station CTFE from the Spanish National Geographic Institute (IGN), gives an improvement of 20% with respect to the optimum configuration. The interest and importance of previous planning on optimum distribution of seismic stations have become evident, as well as the need to enlarge the network in the near future, to attain more accurate focal depths.