Hernández, Francisco J.

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    Characterizing the temporal and spatial distribution of earthquake swarms in the Puerto Rico - Virgin Island block
    (2018-05) Hernández, Francisco J.; López-Venegas, Alberto M.; College of Arts and Sciences - Sciences; Vanacore Maher, Elizabeth; Santana Morant, Damaris; Rodríguez, Lizzette; Department of Geology; Arroyo-Carabayo, José Ramón
    The presence of earthquake swarms and clusters in the north and northeast of the island of Puerto Rico in the northeastern Caribbean have been recorded by the Puerto Rico Seismic Network (PRSN) since it started operations in 1974. Although clusters in the Puerto Rico-Virgin Island (PRVI) block have been observed for over forty years, the nature of their enigmatic occurrence is still poorly understood. In this study, the entire seismic catalog of the PRSN, of approximately 31,000 seismic events, has been limited to a sub-set of 18,000 events located all along north of Puerto Rico in an effort to characterize and understand the underlying mechanism of these clusters. This research uses two declustering methods to identify cluster events in the PRVI block. The first method, known as Model Independent Stochastic Declustering (MISD), filters the catalog subset into cluster and background seismic events, while the second method uses a spatial-temporal algorithm applied to the catalog in order to link the separate seismic events into clusters. After using these two methods, identified clusters were classified into either earthquake swarms or seismic sequences. Once identified, each cluster was analyzed to identify correlations against other clusters in their geographic region. Results from this research seek to: (1) unravel their earthquake clustering behavior through the use of different statistical methods and (2) better understand the mechanism for these clustering of earthquakes. Results have allowed to identify and classify 128 clusters categorized in 11 distinctive regions based on their centers, and their spatial-temporal distribution can be used as starting point for further researcher that seek to determine intra- and inter-plate dynamics.