Spatial-temporal variation of seismicity and spectrum of the 1980 earthquake swarm near the Izu Peninsula, Japan

Abstract

Abstract The spatial-temporal variation of seismicity of the 1980 earthquake swarm off the east coast of the Izu Peninsula, Japan, was investigated. Hypocentral distribution, focal mechanism, wave forms, and spectra of seismic waves were studied. The hypocenters were relocated by using the master event method. The forerunning earthquakes which started about one week before the largest shock (main shock), the 1980 Izu-Hanto-Toho-Oki earthquake (M = 6.7), occurred within the quiescent area of the earthquake activity for the preceding one year. The swarm area migrated toward the south with time and triggered the main shock in June 1980. The fault dimension and geometry were estimated from the aftershock area: the fault length and width are 14 km and 8 km; the strike and dip angles of the fault are N15°W and 65° to N75°E. Locations of the events in an earlier earthquake swarm (1978) were also examined by using difference in the S-P time at five selected stations distributed around the epicentral area. The 1978 swarm events were found to have clustered within a very small area of 8 ×1 km2 located about 2 km to the west of the 1980 swarm area. The earthquakes which occurred after the main shock of the 1980 swarm were classified into two groups, aftershocks and swarm events, according to the location of epicenters, wave forms, and spectra of S waves. The peak frequencies of spectra were distributed around 5 to 8 Hz for the aftershocks and around 10 to 15 Hz for the swarm events. Most of the aftershocks, characterized by low-frequency content, occurred to the south of the main shock within 2 weeks after the main shock. The number of aftershocks decayed following the modified Omori's formula with p = 1.5 ± 0.3. The swarm activity, on the other hand, continued intermittently for about 1 month after the main shock. The 1980 seismic activity is interpreted as a complex of a foreshock-main shock-aftershock sequence and swarm activity. The direction of the longer axis of the swarm area coincided with the direction of the maximum pressure axis of the main shock. The trend of the aftershock zone coincided with the strike of the fault planes of the main shock and aftershocks. This feature strongly suggests that tension cracks trending in the maximum stress direction opened prior to the occurrence of the main shock. The opening of cracks may be accounted for by increasing of interstitial pore pressure associated with increase in regional stress.