Using Surface Waves to Detect Seismic Sources in Alaska

Session: Amphibious Seismic Studies of Plate Boundary Structure and Processes [Poster]
Type: Poster
Date: 4/29/2020
Time: 08:00 AM
Room: Ballroom
Description: 

Alaska has the highest seismicity in the United States. However, limited seismic network coverage in the region has withheld systematic examination of local seismic activity until 2015 when the USArray moved to Alaska and provided a relative uniform station coverage there. Furthermore, the 2018-2019 Alaska Amphibious Array densified coastal stations onshore and deployed 75 OBSs offshore, allowing direct investigation of seismic sources near the Alaska subduction zone. In conjunction with the Alaska regional network, these data offer a great opportunity to systematically detect and locate seismic sources in the region. In addition to regular earthquakes, unconventional seismic sources have been reported in Alaska, including landslides and glacier quakes. These unconventional seismic sources are often missed by standard catalogs because of lacking clear body wave phases. Surface waves have proven useful in detecting and locating such unconventional seismic sources. Here we use seismic surface waves to comprehensively detect and locate seismic events in Alaska with available datasets from 2015 to 2019. We expect to develop a seismic event catalog documenting both earthquakes and unconventional seismic sources. With the catalog, we hope to gain improved understanding of local tectonics and to study physical processes of environmental seismic sources in the region that might have been missed in the standard catalogs but can effectively generate coherent seismic surface waves.

Presenting Author: Xinyu Luo

Authors