Spatiotemporal analysis of repeating earthquakes near Porangahau, Hikurangi Margin, New Zealand

Abstract

<p><b>The Hikurangi subduction zone beneath the eastern North Island, New Zealand exhibits a variety of fault-slip related phenomena including tsunami earthquakes, non-volcanic tremor, low-frequency earthquakes, episodic slow slip, and repeating earthquakes. The northern Hikurangi margin hosts shallow slow-slip and is weakly coupled to shallow depths. In contrast, the southern Hikurangi margin is strongly coupled, and only deep slow-slip has been observed. The transition in coupling occurs beneath the township of Porangahau, and is an exemplary focus region for studying how this change in locking is accommodated. </b></p><p>To examine slip processes beneath Porangahau, we have constructed and analysed a catalogue of repeating earthquakes that occurred between 2004 and 2018. Repeating earthquakes are thought to re-rupture the same fault patch at different times, and thus have nearly identical waveforms, locations and magnitudes. Because repeating earthquakes represent cyclic loading, they can be used to detect temporal and spatial changes of slip-rate at depth and hence monitor how stress is transferred to seismogenic zones. </p><p>To build a catalogue of repeating earthquakes we first clustered the GeoNet earthquake catalogue by distance and correlation to identify potential repeating events. We then used a stronger cross-correlation threshold of at least 0.95 normalised cross-correlation value at three or more stations to identify repeating earthquakes from the initial clusters. This threshold was determined by our group's previous work on the northern Hikurangi margin. We identified 225 families of repeating earthquakes, with each family having two or more earthquakes in the 14-year study period from 2004 to 2018. </p><p>We carried out manual phase picking and polarity identification for the most recent event in each family and computed absolute locations, local magnitudes calibrated with moment magnitude, and high-quality focal mechanisms. For the rest of the events in each family, we conducted cross-correlation re-picking to obtain precise relative locations and relative magnitudes. With precise locations and well-constrained focal mechanisms, we determined whether the repeating earthquake families originated within the Pacific Plate, Australian Plate or on the subduction interface. Most of the families are located within the Pacific Plate, and the majority of families that originate on the subduction interface are located near the township of Porangahau. At least 220 of the 532 identified repeating earthquakes locate at the transition from strong- to weak-coupling of the subduction interface near the township of Porangahau. </p><p>A variety of slow slip events have been detected near Porangahau in the last two decades. Even though some repeating earthquakes correlate spatially and temporally with slow slip events, temporal and spatial correlations between slow slip events and repeating earthquakes are scarce and sparse. The majority of repeating earthquakes are located up-dip or down-dip of modelled slow slip patches, with very few families having spatial correlation with slow slip events. We obtained a moment-recurrence interval relationship for the catalogue of repeating earthquakes near Porangahau and compared it to the relationship obtained by Nadeau and Johnson (1998) at Parkfield, California. Finally, we computed slip-rates using the families located on the subduction interface and obtained an average slip-rate of 13 mm/yr. The insights gained from this study lay the groundwork for future work constraining processes of strain accumulation at the creeping-to-locked transition zone near Porangahau.</p>