The 2002 M5 Au Sable Forks, NY, earthquake sequence: Source scaling relationships and energy budget

Abstract

We find invariant high stress drops and radiated energies for a sequence of intraplate earthquakes. We estimate source parameters of the Au Sable Forks, NY, earthquake (M5, 2002) and aftershocks. This intraplate earthquake was the largest to occur in Eastern North America since 1988 and the largest to be recorded by regional broadband networks. We use the empirical Green's function (EGF) method and define a set of qualitative and quantitative rules for the selection of EGF earthquake pairs and for the quality verification of the obtained EGF spectral ratio. We use a multitaper code that performs the complex spectral division with minimum frequency leakage and allows transformation back to the time domain to check the validity of the EGF event. We estimate source parameters for 22 earthquakes (M1–M5) in the sequence. The median stress drop of 104 MPa (using Madariaga source model, and 19 MPa for a Brune model) is significantly larger than estimates for interplate earthquakes. The lower crustal strain rates, and longer fault healing times in intraplate environments, may be responsible for this high average value. We find constant stress drop between M2 and M5, up to the bandwidth resolution limit (80 Hz) of the study, and no evidence of stress drop breakdown for M2 to M1 earthquakes. We find consistently high radiated seismic energy and apparent stress, and a median radiated energy to seismic moment ratio of 9 × 10−5. This is significantly larger than estimates for interplate earthquakes (∼2 × 10−5) and consistent with higher stress drops and stronger faults.