Abstract
A thorough spatiotemporal analysis of the intense seismic activity that took place near the Aegean coast of NW Turkey during January–March 2017 was conducted, aiming to identify its causative relation to the regional seismotectonic properties. In this respect, absolute and relative locations are paired and a catalog consisting of 2485 events was compiled. Relative locations are determined with high accuracy using the double-difference technique and differential times both from phase pick data and from cross-correlation measurements. The spatial distribution of the relocated events revealed a south-dipping causative fault along with secondary and smaller antithetic segments. Spatially, the seismicity started at the westernmost part and migrated with time to the easternmost part of the activated area. Temporally, two distinctive periods are observed, namely an early period lasting 1 month and a second period which includes the largest events in the sequence. The investigation of the interevent time distribution revealed a triggering mechanism, whereas the ETAS parameters show a strong external force (μ > 1), which might be attributed to the existence of the Tuzla geothermal field.
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Acknowledgements
We greatly appreciate the editorial assistance of Prof. Ramon Zuniga as well as the comments from two anonymous reviewers. The GMT software (www.soest.hawaii.edu/gmt; Wessel and Smith 1998) was used to plot some of the figures. The relocated catalog is available upon request. We acknowledge support of this work by the project “HELPOS—Hellenic System for Lithosphere Monitoring” (MIS 5002697) which is implemented under the action “Reinforcement of the Research and Innovation Infrastructure,” funded by the Operational Programme “Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation” (NSRF 2014-2020) and co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund). Geophysics Department Contribution 909.
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Mesimeri, M., Kourouklas, C., Papadimitriou, E. et al. Analysis of microseismicity associated with the 2017 seismic swarm near the Aegean coast of NW Turkey. Acta Geophys. 66, 479–495 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11600-018-0157-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11600-018-0157-7