An 8-year-long low-frequency earthquake catalog for Southern Cascadia

TL;DR

This study extends a low-frequency earthquake catalog in Southern Cascadia over 8 years, revealing recurrence patterns, tidal stress sensitivity, and potential fault differences, enhancing understanding of slow-slip events and tectonic activity.

Contribution

It provides an extended LFE catalog from 2004 to 2011, identifying new episodes and analyzing their recurrence and tidal stress sensitivity, with implications for fault behavior.

Findings

Down-dip LFE families have shorter recurrence intervals than up-dip families.

LFEs show strong tidal Coulomb stress sensitivity after tremor episodes.

Some LFEs occur during times discouraging slip, indicating possible different fault mechanisms.

Abstract

Low-frequency earthquakes (LFEs) are small magnitude earthquakes, with typical magnitude less than 2, and reduced amplitudes at frequencies greater than 10 Hz relative to ordinary small earthquakes. Their occurrence is often associated with tectonic tremor and slow-slip events along the plate boundary in subduction zones and occasionally transform fault zones. They are usually grouped into families, with all the earthquakes of a given family originating from the same small patch on the plate interface and recurring more or less episodically in a bursty manner. In this study, we extend the LFE catalog obtained by Plourde et al. (2015) during an episode of high tremor activity in April 2008, to the 8-year period 2004-2011. All of the tremor in the Boyarko et al. (2015) catalog south of 42 degrees North has associated LFE activity, but we have identified several smaller episodes of LFEs without associated tremor activity, and extend their catalog forward and backward by a total of about 3 years. As in northern Cascadia, the down-dip LFE families have recurrence intervals several times smaller than the up-dip families. For the April 2008 Episodic Tremor and Slip event, the best recorded LFE families exhibit a strong tidal Coulomb stress sensitivity starting 1.5 days after the rupture front passes by each LFE family. The southernmost LFE family, which has been interpreted to be on the subduction plate boundary, near the up-dip limit of tremor, has a very short recurrence time. Also, these LFEs tend to occur during times when predicted tidal Coulomb stress is discouraging slip on the plate boundary. Both observations suggest this LFE family may be on a different fault.