Illuminating high-resolution crustal fault zones using multi-scale dense arrays and airgun source

Abstract

High-resolution imaging of fault zone structure and its temporal changes can not only advance our understanding of earthquake physics, but is also critical for better seismic hazard preparation and mitigation. In the past a few years, we deployed multi-scale dense arrays across the Chenghai fault system in Binchuan, Yunnan, China. The first array consisted of 381 intermediate-period three-component seismometers with an average station spacing of ∼2 ​km. The array has been deployed in the field for ∼3 months in 2017 and recorded numerous local and teleseismic earthquakes. Travel time analyses based on teleseismic earthquakes and an airgun source in the region indicated clear signature of low-velocity fault zones in the southern branch of the Chenghai fault system. In 2018 we deployed two other linear arrays using the same instruments with much smaller inter-station spacing, e.g. 30–50 ​m, across the southern branch the Chenghai fault. The profile lengths were 8 and 5 ​km, respectively. Record sections of the airgun source on the two linear arrays clearly marked a low-velocity zone (LVZ) within the southern array but no such signature in the northern array, suggesting along-strike variation of the LVZ. Although the instruments within our dense arrays had an intermediate frequency band, we demonstrated that they were capable of characterizing crustal structure with techniques commonly applied to broadband signals such as receiver functions. To our best knowledge, this was the first time to have multi-scale across-fault dense arrays with three-component seismometers in such apertures. These results lay out the pavement to comprehensively investigate fault zone structures as well as to derive subsurface structural changes using dense arrays and the airgun source.

Keywords

• Fault zone
• Temporal changes
• Dense array
• Airgun source