Evaluating the performance of machine-learning-based phase pickers when applied to ocean bottom seismic data: Blanco oceanic transform fault as a case study

TL;DR

This study evaluates the effectiveness of three machine-learning phase pickers on ocean bottom seismic data from the Blanco transform fault, revealing differences in catalog quality and insights into fault slip behavior and seismicity gaps.

Contribution

It provides a systematic comparison of ML-based phase pickers on OBS data and highlights the importance of catalog validation for accurate seismic interpretation.

Findings

Pickblue outperformed other pickers in event detection and location accuracy.

Seismicity gaps suggest aseismic slip zones influenced by seawater infiltration.

Most earthquakes are shallower than the predicted isotherm, with exceptions at Blanco Ridge.

Abstract

Machine-learning-based phase pickers have been successfully leveraged to build high-resolution earthquake catalogs using seismic data on land. However, their performance when applied to ocean bottom seismic (OBS) data remains to be evaluated. In this study, we first adopt three machine-learning-based phase pickers - EQTransformer, Pickblue, and OBSTansformer - to build three earthquake catalogs for the 350-km-long Blanco oceanic transform fault (BTF) based on a year-long OBS deployment. We then systematically compare these catalogs with an existing catalog which utilized a traditional workflow. Results indicate that the Pickblue-based catalog documents more events and/or provides better-constrained locations than the other catalogs. The different performances of the three phase pickers suggest that detailed assessment of catalogs built using automatic workflows is necessary to prevent misinterpretations, especially when applied to regions without training samples. The Pickblue-based catalog reveals seismicity gaps in three extensional segments of BTF which likely represent aseismic slip zones affected by seawater infiltration. Furthermore, most earthquakes are shallower than the 600-degree isotherm predicted by a half-space conductive cooling model, except for the Blanco Ridge segment which has hosted 80% of the Mw > 6.0 earthquakes along BTF since 1976. These Blanco Ridge deep earthquake clusters can be explained by hydrothermal cooling or the serpentinization of mantle peridotite due to seawater infiltration along conduits created by the deeper ruptures of large earthquakes. Our analyses also demonstrate the importance of careful examination of automatically produced earthquake catalogs since mislocated events can lead to very different interpretations of fault slip modes from seismicity distribution.