Mapping of Eastern North Atlantic Ocean seismicity from Po/So observations at a mid-aperture seismological broad-band deep sea array

Abstract

SUMMARY A mid-aperture broad-band test array (OBS array DOCTAR) was deployed from June 2011 to April 2012 about 100 km north of the Gloria fault in the Eastern North Atlantic in about 5000 m water depth. In addition arrays were installed on Madeira Island and in western Portugal mainland. For the first time in the Eastern North Atlantic, we recorded a large number of high frequency Po and So waves from local and regional small and moderate earthquakes (ML < 4). An incoherent beamforming method was adapted to scan continuous data for such Po and So arrivals applying a sliding window waveform migration and frequency–wavenumber technique. We identify about 320 Po and 1550 So arrivals and compare the phase onsets with the ISC catalogue (ISC 2015) for the same time span. Up to a distance of 6° to the DOCTAR stations all events listed in the ISC catalogue could be associated to Po and So phases. Arrivals from events in more than 10° distance could be identified only in some cases. Only few Po and/or So arrivals were detected for earthquakes from the European and African continental area, the continental shelf regions and for earthquakes within or northwest of the Azores plateau. Unexpectedly, earthquake clusters are detected within the oceanic plates north and south of the Gloria fault and far from plate boundaries, indicating active intraplate structures. We also observe and locate numerous small magnitude earthquakes on the segment of the Gloria fault directly south of DOCTAR, which likely coincides with the rupture of the 25 November 1941 event. Local small magnitude earthquakes located beneath DOCTAR show hypocentres up to 30 km depth and strike-slip focal mechanisms. A comparison with detections at temporary mid-aperture arrays on Madeira and in western Portugal shows that the deep ocean array performs much better than the island and the continental array regarding the detection threshold for events in the oceanic plates. We conclude that sparsely distributed mid-aperture seismic arrays in the deep ocean could decrease the detection and location threshold for seismicity with ML < 4 in the oceanic plate and might constitute a valuable tool to monitor oceanic plate seismicity.