A functional tool to explore the reliability of micro-earthquake focal mechanism solutions for seismotectonic purposes

Abstract

Improving the knowledge of seismogenic faults requires the integration of geological, seismological, and geophysical information. Among several analyses, the definition of earthquake focal mechanisms plays an essential role in providing information about the geometry of individual faults and the stress regime acting in a region. Fault plane solutions can be retrieved by several techniques operating in specific magnitude ranges, both in the time and frequency domain and using different data. For earthquakes of low magnitude, the limited number of available data and their uncertainties can compromise the stability of fault plane solutions. In this work, we propose a useful methodology to evaluate how well a seismic network, used to monitor natural and/or induced micro-seismicity, estimates focal mechanisms as a function of magnitude, location, and kinematics of seismic source and consequently their reliability in defining seismotectonic models. To study the consistency of focal mechanism solutions, we use a Bayesian approach that jointly inverts the P/S long-period spectral-level ratios and the P polarities to infer the fault plane solutions. We applied this methodology, by computing synthetic data, to the local seismic network operating in the Campania–Lucania Apennines (southern Italy) aimed to monitor the complex normal fault system activated during the Ms 6.9, 1980 earthquake. We demonstrate that the method we propose is effective and can be adapted for other case studies with a double purpose. It can be a valid tool to design or to test the performance of local seismic networks, and more generally it can be used to assign an absolute uncertainty to focal mechanism solutions fundamental for seismotectonic studies.