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The Vogtland, located at the border region between the Czech Republic and Germany, is known for Holocene volcanism, gas and fluid emissions as well as for reoccurring earthquake swarms, pointing towards a high geodynamic activity. During the earthquake swarm in 2008/2009, a temporary array was installed close to Rohrbach (Germany), at an epicentral distance of about 10 km from the Nový Kostel focal zone (aperture ~0.75 km).
22 events of the recorded swarm were selected to set up a source array. Source arrays are spatially clustered earthquakes, which can be used in a similar manner as receiver array recordings of single events (Green’s functions reciprocity). The application of array seismology techniques like beam forming requires similar waveforms and precisely known origin times and locations. The resemblance of waveforms was assured by visual selection of events and quantified with the calculation of cross-correlation coefficients. We observed that the different events recorded at a single station generally show greater resemblances than the recordings of one event at all stations of the receiver array. This indicates a heterogeneous subsurface beneath the receiver array and a comparably homogeneous source array volume with respect to the frequency-dependent resolution of both arrays.
Beam forming was applied on the Z, N and E component recordings of the source array events at 11 stations, and the results were analysed with respect to converted or reflected crustal phases. While the theoretical back azimuth of the direct phases match the beam forming results in case of the source array analysis, in case of receiver array beam forming derivations of 15°-25° are observed.
PS phases, closely following the direct P phase and presumably SP phases, arriving shortly before the direct S phase can be observed on several stations. Based on the time differences to the direct P and S phases we inferred a conversion depth of about 0.6-0.9 km. A second deeper source array was set up in order to interpret a structural phase arriving 0.85 s after the direct P phase on records of deeper events only.
Additionally to the source array beam forming method an analytical method with a fixed medium velocity and a grid search method, both for determining conversion/ reflection locations of phases traveling off the direct line between source and receiver array, were developed and applied to other observed phases.
In conclusion, we think that the distinct beam forming results along with the striking waveform resemblance reveal the opportunities of using source arrays consisting of small swarm events for the analysis of crustal structures.
Earthquake swarms are characterized by large numbers of events occurring in a short period of time within a confined source volume and without significant mainshock aftershock pattern as opposed to tectonic sequences. Intraplate swarms in the absence of active volcanism usually occur in continental rifts as for example in the Eger Rift zone in North West Bohemia, Czech Republic. A common hypothesis links event triggering to pressurized fluids. However, the exact causal chain is often poorly understood since the underlying geotectonic processes are slow compared to tectonic sequences. The high event rate during active periods challenges standard seismological routines as these are often designed for single events and therefore costly in terms of human resources when working with phase picks or computationally costly when exploiting full waveforms.
This methodological thesis develops new approaches to analyze earthquake swarm seismicity as well as the underlying seismogenic volume. It focuses on the region of North West (NW) Bohemia, a well studied, well monitored earthquake swarm region.
In this work I develop and test an innovative approach to detect and locate earthquakes using deep convolutional neural networks. This technology offers great potential as it allows to efficiently process large amounts of data which becomes increasingly important given that seismological data storage grows at increasing pace. The proposed deep neural network trained on NW Bohemian earthquake swarm records is able to locate 1000 events in less than 1 second using full waveforms while approaching precision of double difference relocated catalogs. A further technological novelty is that the trained filters of the deep neural network’s first layer can be repurposed to function as a pattern matching event detector without additional training on noise datasets. For further methodological development and benchmarking, I present a new toolbox to generate realistic earthquake cluster catalogs as well as synthetic full waveforms of those clusters in an automated fashion. The input is parameterized using constraints on source volume geometry, nucleation and frequency-magnitude relations. It harnesses recorded noise to produce highly realistic synthetic data for benchmarking and development. This tool is used to study and assess detection performance in terms of magnitude of completeness Mc of a full waveform detector applied to synthetic data of a hydrofracturing experiment at the Wysin site, Poland.
Finally, I present and demonstrate a novel approach to overcome the masking effects of wave propagation between earthquake and stations and to determine source volume attenuation directly in the source volume where clustered earthquakes occur. The new event couple spectral ratio approach exploits high frequency spectral slopes of two events sharing the greater part of their rays. Synthetic tests based on the toolbox mentioned before show that this method is able to infer seismic wave attenuation within the source volume at high spatial resolution. Furthermore, it is independent from the distance towards a station as well as the complexity of the attenuation and velocity structure outside of the source volume of swarms. The application to recordings of the NW Bohemian earthquake swarm shows increased P phase attenuation within the source volume (Qp < 100) based on results at a station located close to the village Luby (LBC). The recordings of a station located in epicentral proximity, close to Nový Kostel (NKC), show a relatively high complexity indicating that waves arriving at that station experience more scattering than signals recorded at other stations. The high level of complexity destabilizes the inversion. Therefore, the Q estimate at NKC is not reliable and an independent proof of the high attenuation finding given the geometrical and frequency constraints is still to be done. However, a high attenuation in the source volume of NW Bohemian swarms has been postulated before in relation to an expected, highly damaged zone bearing CO 2 at high pressure.
The methods developed in the course of this thesis yield the potential to improve our understanding regarding the role of fluids and gases in intraplate event clustering.