Tremor In Cascadia Research Articles

Continental crust anisotropy measurements from tectonic tremor in Cascadia

AbstractWe present new observations of crustal anisotropy in the southern Cascadia fore arc from tectonic tremor. The abundance of tremor activity in Oregon and northern California during slow‐slip events offers an enormous amount of information with which to measure and analyze anisotropy in the upper brittle continental crust. To accomplish this, we performed analyses of wave polarization and shear wave splitting of tectonic tremor signals by using three component broadband seismic stations. The splitting times range between 0.11 and 0.32 s and are consistent with typical values observed in the continental crust. Fast polarization azimuths are, in general, margin parallel and trend N‐S, which parallels the azimuths of the maximum compressive stresses observed in this region. This pattern is likely to be controlled by the stress field. Comparatively, the anisotropic structure of fast directions observed in the northern section of the Cascadia margin is oblique with respect to the southern section of Cascadia, which, in general, trends E‐W and is mainly controlled by active faulting and geological structures. Source distribution analysis using a bivariate normal distribution that expresses the distribution of tremors in a preferred direction shows that in northern California and Oregon, the population of tremors tends to distribute parallel to fast polarization azimuths and maximum compressive stresses, suggesting that both tremor propagation and anisotropy are influenced by the stress field. Results show that the anisotropy reflects an active tectonic process that involves the northward movement of the Oregon Block, which is rotating as a rigid body. In northern Cascadia, previous results of anisotropy show that the crust is undergoing a shortening process due to velocity differences between the Oregon Block and the North America plate, which is moving more slowly with respect to the Oregon Block, making it clash against Vancouver Island.

Low friction and fault weakening revealed by rising sensitivity of tremor to tidal stress

At subduction zones, deep parts of the fault can slip slowly, generating tremor. Analysis of tremor in Cascadia reveals increasing sensitivity of slip to tidal stresses over several days, implying that the fault is weak, and weakens as it slips.

Crustal anisotropy from tectonic tremor under Washington State in the Cascadia

AbstractWe present new observations of crustal shear wave anisotropy extracted from nonvolcanic tremor in Cascadia under Washington State. Measurements of crustal anisotropy are extremely sparse and limited in this area mainly due to low level of seismicity. Abundance of tremor activity during slow earthquakes offers a unique opportunity to measure anisotropy parameters of the continental crust using tremor signal. To accomplish this, polarization and splitting analyses of nonvolcanic tremor are performed using three‐component broadband seismic stations. Splitting times measurements range between 0.08 and 0.17 s and similar to the splitting magnitude typically observed in the continental crust. Fast direction of shear wave anisotropy generally trends ESE‐WNW. Fast polarization directions are, in general, perpendicular to the prevailing maximum compressive stress field but tend to be parallel to several mapped EW and ESE‐WNW trending faults in this area. The observed spatial pattern of anisotropy is likely controlled by faulting that accommodates NS compression resulting from the tectonic movement of the Oregon block toward north. Existence of several EW trending crustal faults and source parameters of crustal earthquakes at depth, consistent with the regional stress regime, indicate that these faults may be the dominant factor causing the observed pattern of shear wave anisotropy.

Accurate tremor locations from coherent S and P waves

AbstractNonvolcanic tremor is an important component of the slow slip processes which load faults from below, but accurately locating tremor has proven difficult because tremor rarely contains clear P or S wave arrivals. Here we report the observation of coherence in the shear and compressional waves of tremor at widely separated stations which allows us to detect and accurately locate tremor events. An event detector using data from two stations sees the onset of tremor activity in the Cascadia tremor episodes of February 2003, July 2004, and September 2005 and confirms the previously reported south to north migration of the tremor. Event detectors using data from three and four stations give Sand P arrival times of high accuracy. The hypocenters of the tremor events fall at depths of ∼30 to ∼40 km and define a narrow plane dipping at a shallow angle to the northeast, consistent with the subducting plate interface. The S wave polarizations and P wave first motions define a source mechanism in agreement with the northeast convergence seen in geodetic observations of slow slip. Tens of thousands of locations determined by constraining the events to the plate interface show tremor sources highly clustered in space with a strongly similar pattern of sources in the three episodes examined. The deeper sources generate tremor in minor episodes as well. The extent to which the narrow bands of tremor sources overlap between the three major episodes suggests relative epicentral location errors as small as 1–2 km.

Short‐time scale correlation between slow slip and tremor in Cascadia

We use borehole strain and seismic data to show that slow slip and tremor in central Cascadia are correlated on a range of time scales shorter than 1 day. The recorded strain rate is our proxy for the slow slip moment rate, and the seismic amplitude is our proxy for the tremor amplitude. We find that, on average, the strain rate is higher when the seismic amplitude is larger. This correlation persists on time scales between 15 min and 16 h, and it can be seen in each of the five slow slip events between 2007 and 2011. Our results imply that the slow slip moment rate varies by a large amount even at these short time scales. For instance, we observe a factor of 2 variation on time scales shorter than 4 h. This apparently aperiodic variation is larger than the previously observed variation in moment rate resulting from tidal forcing. It is a lower bound on the actual moment rate variation, as we detect only changes in slow slip that are correlated with tremor amplitude.

Tremor asperities in the transition zone control evolution of slow earthquakes

Slow earthquakes, characterized by slow slip and associated seismic radiation called non‐volcanic tremor, have been observed in major subduction zones worldwide. They constitute an important mode of stress release for the fault's transition zone, which lies directly downdip of the locked segment, the nucleation zone of large damaging earthquakes. However, the depth of tremor in Cascadia, and the factors governing tremor generation and rupture propagation during slow quakes remain enigmatic. Here, we develop a novel multibeam‐backprojection (MBBP) method to detect and locate tremor using multiple mini seismic arrays. We apply this technique to image tremor activity during an entire ETS‐cycle including a large episodic tremor and slip (ETS) event in Cascadia with unprecedented resolution. Our results suggest that the majority of the tremor is occurring near the plate interface. We observe strongly heterogeneous tremor distribution with patches in the transition zone that experience repeated tremor episodes and produce most of the tremor. The patches, tens of kilometers in dimension, behave like asperities on the fault plane. During the large ETS event, rupture propagation velocity varies at least by a factor of five, and seems to be modulated by these tremor asperities. These observations support a model in which the transition zone is heterogeneous and consists of patches of asperities with surrounding regions slipping aseismically. The asperities fail quasi‐periodically releasing stress and appear to regulate rupture propagation and tremor generation during slow earthquakes. This study presents new observations revealing the tectonic characteristics of the transition zone controlling the generation and evolution of slow earthquakes.

Cascadia tremor spectra: Low corner frequencies and earthquake-like high-frequency falloff

The discovery of non-volcanic tremor (NVT) has opened a new window to observe major Earth plate boundaries. However, the spectral characteristics of NVT have not been well studied due to poor signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) on individual seismograms. We estimate the spectral content of Cascadia tremor between 2.5 and 20 Hz by suppressing noise using array analysis, and compute empirical path corrections using nearby small earthquakes. We demonstrate that the displacement spectra of the Cascadia tremor have corner frequencies around 3–8 Hz and fall off at f−2 to f−3 at higher frequencies. Our results have the following implications. (1) The high-frequency falloff of tremor agrees with the observations of regular earthquakes, suggesting that tremor can be analyzed using standard spectral models. Prior analyses that have shown a tremor spectral falloff proportional to f−1 may reflect only the spectral behavior over a limited frequency band. (2) Tremor may be no different from a swarm of microearthquakes with abnormally small stress drops on the order of kPa, likely due to the presence of fluids. Alternatively the low corner frequencies of tremor may reflect abnormally slow ruptures. (3) Fitting a standard Brune (1970) spectral model implies a moment release rate of Cascadia tremor of 3.8 × 1010 N·m/s assuming the tremor signals are P waves (or 1.4 × 1010 N·m/s assuming S-waves). This implies that a typical 20-day long tremor episode releases moment equivalent to Mw 5.1 (P-wave) or Mw 4.9 (S-wave), although these may be underestimates if the spectra deviate substantially from the Brune model at very low frequencies.

Rapid, continuous streaking of tremor in Cascadia

Nonvolcanic tremor is a recently discovered weak seismic signal associated with slow slip on a fault plane and has potential to answer many questions about how faults move. Its spatiotemporal distribution, however, is complex and varies over different time scales, and the causal physical mechanisms remain unclear. Here we use a beam backprojection method to show rapid, continuous, slip‐parallel streaking of tremor over time scales of several minutes to an hour during the May 2008 episodic tremor and slip event in the Cascadia subduction zone. The streaks propagate across distances up to 65 km, primarily parallel to the slip direction of the subduction zone, both updip and downdip at velocities ranging from 30 to 200 km/h. We explore mainly two models that may explain such continuous tremor streaking. The first involves interaction of slowly migrating creep front with slip‐parallel linear structures on the fault. The second is pressure‐driven fluid flow through structurally controlled conduits on the fault. Both can be consistent with the observed propagation velocities and geometries, although the second one requires unlikely condition. In addition, we put this new observation in the context of the overall variability of tremor behavior observed over different time scales.

Quantifying the time function of nonvolcanic tremor based on a stochastic model

Nonvolcanic tremor is the seismically observable component of slow earthquakes, which have been recently discovered in subduction zones around the world, including major study areas at the Nankai and Cascadia subduction zones. Although tremor appears to occur randomly in both areas, Cascadia tremor has a longer duration than Nankai tremor. In the present study, this difference in tremor duration is quantified using a Brownian slow earthquake model that explains several features of tremor and slow earthquakes. A previous Brownian model is improved and applied to explain the cumulative distribution function of tremor amplitude, which is approximated by a χ2 distribution. The model also shows that the power spectrum of tremor amplitude has a simple analytic formula, including a characteristic time. An inversion method is developed to measure the characteristic time from the tremor spectrum in the presence of non‐Gaussian background noise. The method is applied to several tremor sequences in the Nankai and Cascadia subduction zones to quantitatively confirm the apparent differences in tremor behavior between the two areas. The constants for Cascadia and Nankai tremor are 1000–3000 s and 100–1000 s, respectively, with temporal increases in these values observed over the course of 1‐day records of activity. The difference in characteristic time between the two areas may reflect geometric constraints such as the width of the tremor region.

Interactive Tremor Monitoring

The purpose of this article is to explore new Web-based resources for disseminating data in an interactive and intuitive way that is accessible and engaging to the public without sacrificing scientific utility. This article highlights these new opportunities and describes their synthesis with recently developed automated tremor monitoring methodologies. The resulting product is a website that the reader may find useful to explore in tandem with this article, http://www.pnsn.org/tremor. In this article, the data dissemination example is specifically applied to Cascadia tremor, but the utilization of freely accessible Web applications to provide an interactive Web experience for the public and scientific community alike could easily be applied to many different aspects of seismology. Since their discovery nearly a decade ago, advances in both instrumentation and methodology in subduction zones around the world have brought the causal connection between seismically observed tectonic tremor (Obara 2002) and geodetically observed slow slip (Dragert et al. 2001) into sharper focus. In addition to the strong spatio-temporal correlation between the separately observed phenomena (Wech et al. 2009), mounting evidence indicates that deep, non-volcanic tremor represents slow shear (Ide et al. 2007; Wech and Creager 2007) occurring at the interface (Shelly et al. 2006, 2007) between the subducting oceanic and overriding continental plates, suggesting the two phenomena are different manifestations of the same process. Of course, there is still ongoing debate over the depth and mechanism of tectonic tremor (Kao et al. 2005; McCausland et al. 2005), but what is clear is that tremor serves as a proxy for slow slip. Considering geodesy's lower limits in spatial resolution and slow slip detection together with the abundance of low-level, ageodetic tremor, this connection makes tremor a key component for monitoring when, where, and how much slip is occurring. Because slow slip transfers stress …

Array analysis and precise source location of deep tremor in Cascadia

We describe a new method to estimate the S‐P time of tremor‐like signals and its application to the nonvolcanic tremor recorded in July 2004 by three dense arrays in Cascadia. The cross correlation between vertical and horizontal components indicates that very often the high‐amplitude tremor signal contains sequences of P and S waves characterized by constant S‐P times (TS‐P) in the range 3.5–7 s. A detailed observation of the three component seismograms stacked over the array stations confirms the presence of P and S wave sequences. The knowledge of the TS‐P poses a strong constrain on the source‐array distance, which dramatically reduces the uncertainty on source locations when used with more traditional array processing techniques. Data were analyzed using the zero lag cross‐correlation technique (ZLCC) to estimate the propagation properties of the most correlated phases in the wavefield. Detailed polarization analyses were computed using the covariance matrix method in the time domain. Polarization parameters, joint with the results of ZLCC, allows for the discrimination between P and S coherent waves. Results show that the tremor wavefield is composed mostly by shear waves, although a consistent amount of coherent P waves is often observable. The comparison of the back azimuth at the three arrays indicate that the source of deep tremor migrates over a wide area, and often many independent sources located far from each other are active at the same time. The tremor source was located by a probabilistic method that uses the results of ZLCC, given a velocity model. When available, the inclusion of the TS‐P time in the location procedure strongly reduces the depth range, with a distribution of hypocenters very near the subduction interface. This result, significantly different compared with previous less precise locations, makes the Cascadia nonvolcanic tremor more similar to the nonvolcanic tremor recorded in Japan, at least in cases of measurable TS‐P. The polarization azimuth aligned with the slow slip direction and the source located on the plate interface indicate that deep tremor and slow slip are two different manifestations of a common phenomenon related with the subduction dynamics.

Tremor-tide correlations and near-lithostatic pore pressure on the deep San Andreas fault

Since its initial discovery nearly a decade ago, non-volcanic tremor has provided information about a region of the Earth that was previously thought incapable of generating seismic radiation. A thorough explanation of the geologic process responsible for tremor generation has, however, yet to be determined. Owing to their location at the plate interface, temporal correlation with geodetically measured slow-slip events and dominant shear wave energy, tremor observations in southwest Japan have been interpreted as a superposition of many low-frequency earthquakes that represent slip on a fault surface. Fluids may also be fundamental to the failure process in subduction zone environments, as teleseismic and tidal modulation of tremor in Cascadia and Japan and high Poisson ratios in both source regions are indicative of pressurized pore fluids. Here we identify a robust correlation between extremely small, tidally induced shear stress parallel to the San Andreas fault and non-volcanic tremor activity near Parkfield, California. We suggest that this tremor represents shear failure on a critically stressed fault in the presence of near-lithostatic pore pressure. There are a number of similarities between tremor in subduction zone environments, such as Cascadia and Japan, and tremor on the deep San Andreas transform, suggesting that the results presented here may also be applicable in other tectonic settings.

Moment release rate of Cascadia tremor constrained by GPS

A comparison of GPS and seismic analyses of 23 distinct episodic tremor and slip events, located throughout the Cascadia subduction zone over an 11‐year period, yields a highly linear relationship between moment release, as estimated from GPS, and total duration of nonvolcanic tremor, as summed from regional seismic arrays. The events last 1–5 weeks, typically produce ∼5 mm of static forearc deformation, and show cumulative totals of tremor that range from 40 to 280 h. Moment released by each event is estimated by inverting GPS‐measured deformation, which is sensitive to all rates of tremor‐synchronous faulting, including aseismic creep, for total slip along the North American‐Juan de Fuca plate interface. Tremor, which is shown to be largely invariant in amplitude and frequency content both between events and with respect to its duration, is quantified using several different parameterizations that agree to within 10%. All known Cascadia events detected since 1997, which collectively span the Cascadia arc from northern California to Vancouver Island, Canada, release moment during tremor at a rate of 5.2 ± 0.4 × 1016 N m per hour of recorded tremor. This relationship enables estimation of moment dissipation, via seismic monitoring of tremor, along the deeper Cascadia subduction zone that poses the greatest threat to its major metropolitan centers.

Cascadia Tremor Located Near Plate Interface Constrained by S Minus P Wave Times

Nonvolcanic tremor is difficult to locate because it does not produce impulsive phases identifiable across a seismic network. An alternative approach to identifying specific phases is to measure the lag between the S and P waves. We cross-correlate vertical and horizontal seismograms to reveal signals common to both, but with the horizontal delayed with respect to the vertical. This lagged correlation represents the time interval between vertical compressional waves and horizontal shear waves. Measurements of this interval, combined with location techniques, resolve the depth of tremor sources within +/-2 kilometers. For recent Cascadia tremor, the sources locate near or on the subducting slab interface. Strong correlations and steady S-P time differences imply that tremor consists of radiation from repeating sources.