Microearthquakes and Crustal Structures in the Southern Okinawa Trough

Located east of Taiwan, the southern Okinawa Trough (SOT) is a portion of a young continental backarc basin, which is still in the rifting stage. Based on seismicity data, a slab tear was identified along 123.3°E. In order to better understand the nature and role of tectonic features in this region, a passive seismic Ocean Bottom Seismometer (OBS) experiment was conducted from November 19 to December 1, 2003. 15 OBSs were deployed in a 130 x 90 km area including the Ryukyu slab tear and the Cross Backarc Volcanic Trail (CBVT). OBSs with three 4.5 Hz component geophones and an hydrophone recorded about 4000 microearthquakes. Most of them (about 94%) are crustal earthquakes (0-20 km) which occured in the SOT central graben. Just a few earthquakes were recorded from the upper slope of the northern SOT and from the Ryukyu forearc. Most of the earthquake local magnitudes (ML) range from 1 to 2, even if the whole range of magnitudes spans from 0.9 to 4. Three clusters of high microearthquake activity are observed in : (1) the CBVT area (24.7-25°N; 122.5-123°E); (2) the southern central graben area (24.65-24.85°N;123-123.3°E); and (3) the northern central graben area (24.9-25.2°N ;123.2-123.65°E). The southern central graben cluster is also identified by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). The earthquakes determined by the JMA in the northern central graben present larger magnitudes than ours, but are globally located 10-km south of our cluster. The CBVT cluster is not recorded in JMA data probably because the shallow (O-5 km) volcanic activity only involved small earthquakes which are too far from the JMA's network. Based on swath bathymetric and seismic data, most of the epicenters lie along already identified normal faults. Thus, except the volcanic activity, which occurs in the CBVT area, the main factor controlling the SOT tectonic activity is normal faulting. On the northern and southern slopes of the central graben, hypocenters occur along normal fauls which dip toward the south and the north respectively. The deepest earthquakes (15-20 km) are located in the vicinity of the trough axis, within the lower crust. According to the distribution of the seismicity on N-S profiles cutting across the clusters, the dips of normal faults are about 70° and 55° for the northern and southern normal faults respectively. Dips of normal faults are consistent with those calculated from the seismic profiles acquired in this region. Lateron, we will combine the data from the OBSs with those of the 16 onland stations located on Taiwanese and Japanese islands in order to obtain a reliable crustal velocity tomography.