The June‐July 1993 seismo‐acoustic event at CoAxial segment, Juan de Fuca Ridge: Evidence for a lateral dike injection

Abstract

The CoAxial segment (Juan de Fuca Ridge) was the site of an intense swarm of earthquakes that began at 21:43 GMT on June 26, 1993 (Julian Day 177). The swarm started near 46°15′N and migrated northward over the next 40 hours to ∼46°36′N, where the majority of 676 events occurred during the following 3 weeks of activity. The earthquakes propagated NNE at a velocity of 0.3±0.1 m s−1 from the southern to northern swarm sites. The activity went undetected by land‐based seismic networks along the Oregon and Washington coasts, suggesting that the earthquakes were all M ≤ 4.0. The character of this earthquake swarm is very similar to dike injections observed at Krafla and Kilauea Volcanoes. The earthquake activity and subsequent migration probably represent a lateral dike injection into faults and fissures comprising the CoAxial segment. The reservoir acting as the dike's source likely resides beneath, or to the south of, the initial southern swarm of earthquakes. The large magma supply at Axial Volcano cannot be ruled out as the source for the CoAxial dike, even though Axial Volcano exhibited no earthquake activity related to the CoAxial swarm. The T‐wave earthquake swarm reported here is the first deep‐ocean observation of volcanic seismicity associated with what most likely was a mid‐ocean ridge dike injection event.