Graduation Year

2010

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.S.

Degree Granting Department

Geology

Major Professor

Diana Roman, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Sarah Kruse, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Paul Wetmore, Ph.D.

Keywords

velocity model, focal mechanism, b-value, relocation, InSAR, volcanic arc, crustal deformation

Abstract

Microearthquake (< M3.0) swarms occur frequently in volcanic environments, but do not always culminate in an eruption. Such non-eruptive swarms may be caused by stresses induced by magma intrusion, hydrothermal fluid circulation, or regional tectonic processes, such as slow-slip earthquakes. Strandline Lake, located 30 km northeast of Mount Spurr volcano in south-central Alaska, experienced an intense earthquake swarm between August 1996 and August 1998. The Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) catalog indicates that a total of 2,999 earthquakes were detected during the swarm period, with a maximum magnitude of Mw 3.1 and a depth range of 0-30 km below sea level (with the majority of catalog hypocenters located between 5-10 km BSL). The cumulative seismic moment of the swarm was 2.03e15 N-m, equivalent to a cumulative magnitude of Mw 4.2. Because of the swarm's distance from the nearest Holocene volcanic vent, seismic monitoring was poor and gas and GPS data do not exist for the swarm period. However, combined waveforms from a dense seismic network on Mount Spurr and from several regional seismic stations allow reanalysis of the swarm earthquakes. I first developed a new 1-D velocity model for the Strandline Lake region by re-picking and inverting precise arrival times for 27 large Strandline Lake earthquakes. The new velocity model reduced the average RMS for these earthquakes from 0.16 to 0.11s, and the average horizontal and vertical location errors from 3.3 to 2.5 km and 4.7 to 3.0 km, respectively. Depths of the 27 earthquakes ranged from 10.5 to 22.1 km with an average depth of 16.6 km. A moderately high b-value of 1.33 was determined for the swarm period, possibly indicative of magmatic activity. However, a similarly high b-value of 1.25 was calculated for the background period. 28 well-constrained fault plane solutions for both swarm and background earthquakes indicate a diverse mixture of strike-slip, dip-slip, and reverse faulting beneath Strandline Lake. Finally, five Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) images spanning the swarm period unambiguously show no evidence of surface deformation. While a shallow volcanic intrusion appears to be an unlikely cause of the Strandline Lake swarm based on the new well-constrained earthquake depths and the absence of strong surface deformation, the depth range of 10.5 to 22.1 km BSL for relocated earthquakes and the high degree of FPS heterogeneity for this swarm are similar to an earthquake swarm beneath Lake Tahoe, California in 2003 caused by a deep intrusion near the base of the crust (Smith et al, 2004). This similarity suggests that a deep crustal magmatic intrusion could have occurred beneath the Strandline Lake area in 1996-1998 and may have been responsible for the resulting microearthquake activity.

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