Kinematic Waveform Inversion: Application in Southwest Iberia Seismicity

The seismic activity that affects the Portuguese territory occurs mainly and more frequently offshore, in the south and southwest of Mainland Portugal. The study of the Portuguese seismicity is conditioned by the poor azimuthal coverage, due to the geographic location of Portugal, and by the large sedimentary basin west of the straight of Gibraltar (Cadiz Basin). In this work we focus on the study of regional seismicity in Portugal (mostly offshore earthquakes) using a recently developed package - the KIWI (Kinematic Waveform Inversion) tools. This new technique performs point and finite source inversions at regional distances. The KIWI routine is a multi-step approach composed of 3 steps, finding different source parameters at different steps. At first, we assume a point source approximation. We initially retrieve the focal mechanism of the earthquake (strike, dip, and rake), the seismic scalar moment M0 and the depth. This inversion step is performed in the spectral domain, by fitting amplitude spectra. In the second step, compressive and dilatation quadrants are retrieved, which is carried out in the time domain. Refined latitude and longitude for the centroid, as well as an earthquake origin time, are also given at this time. The final step of the inversion consists of a simplified finite-fault inversion. We assume the eikonal source model, and determine parameters such as the fault plane orientation (discrimination between fault and auxiliary plane), radius (rupture extension), nucleation point coordinates (indicative of directivity effects) and average rupture velocity of the earthquake. This inversion is performed in the frequency domain by fitting amplitude spectra in a wider frequency band (including higher frequencies). This multi-step approach has the advantage of using different inversion methods, seismic phases and range of frequencies to infer specific parameters. In this work we study 17 regional earthquakes occurred in Southwest Iberia between 2007 and 2009 with moderate magnitude (3.3 to 4.4). The small magnitude of these earthquakes prevents their study with the third step of the algorithm. The solutions obtained are evaluated by a quality criteria and compared with other moment tensor solutions. The quality factor is based on the number of stations and on the misfit between the recorded and the synthetic waveforms. Apart from this study another offshore event was analyzed. The earthquake occurred SW of St Vincent Cape on February 12, 2007 with Mw 5.9. In this study the KIWI tools were employed to infer both the point and finite source parameters of this earthquake. The results of the kinematic source inversion step indicate that the 2007 HAP earthquake ruptured a plane trending WNW-ESE, whereas previous studies suggest that the conjugate fault plane (ENE-WSW) is the true rupture plane. The proposed solution also indicates that the earthquake occurred within the SWIM fault-zone. However, the 46° dip is difficult to reconcile with the sub-vertical nature of the SWIM faults.