Casallas-Nope, Ivan F.

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    W phase source inversion for Caribbean earthquakes at the Puerto Rico seismic network: a first approach
    (2018) Casallas-Nope, Ivan F.; Huérfano-Moreno, Víctor A.; College of Arts and Sciences – Sciences; López, Alberto; Rivera, Luis; Department of Geology; Castillo, Paul
    Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands (PRVI) are located in the Northeastern Caribbean, a seismically active zone. Historical records show that large damaging earthquakes have occurred in 1867 (M 7.3), 1918 (M 7.3) and 1943 (M 7.5). At least two of these earthquakes resulted in devastating tsunamis. Determining timely and accurately source parameters of an earthquake: location, magnitude and fault geometry, is key for tsunami warning purposes. As part of this effort, this study employs the W phase source inversion for quantifying the feasibility of the method for the PRVI region. The W phase source inversion method takes advantage of the very long period (100-1000 sec) signal and early arrival times (between the P and the S-waves) to provide a rapid and robust determination of the source parameters for moderate to large earthquakes in teleseismic and regional distances. With this scope we study 40 regional events with Mw >= 5.8 occurred in the period 2005-2017 and Δ <= 30°. For validation purposes, the inversion results are systematically compared to those published in the Global CMT project (GCMT). Based on the results, we conclude that the W-phase source inversion algorithm appears to be suitable to estimate the size and the focal mechanism for events with Mw >= 5.8 in the Caribbean provided a reasonable coverage: azimuthal gap less than 270° and not less than 7 stations. Under such conditions the obtained moment magnitude is within 0.1 magnitude units of the GCMT value units and the similarity in the focal mechanisms better than 0.75 .