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Relocation of two earthquakes in the Southwest Indian Ridge area combining land seismic stations’ with OBSs’ data

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Abstract

Two earthquakes were recorded by 20 ocean bottom seismometers (OBS) deployed in the Southwest Indian Ridge (SWIR) area during a three-dimensional seismic survey in 2010. Their magnitudes (both M b = 4.4) and hypocenters have been determined by National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) only using land seismic stations onset times. After the frequency analysis and the band-pass filtering of the OBSs’ data, 7 and 13 P-phase onset times from OBSs were successfully picked for these two events, respectively. Then these two events were relocated by HYPOSAT program with onset times together from OBSs and land seismic stations using different velocity models. These relocation experiments confirm both the importance of adding OBSs’ onset data and the need to apply a local oceanic velocity model for the location of these two events happened on the SWIR. This research has accumulated a wealth of experience for earthquakes observation and research using OBSs in the ocean.

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Acknowledgments

We highly appreciate the scientists and the crew of DY115-21 cruise on board R/V Dayang Yihao. We are equally thankful for the discussions with John Chen, Jean-Claude Sibuet and Hongfeng Yang. This research was supported by funds from Chinese National Natural Science Foundation (Contracts 41606064, 41176053, 91428204), and DY115 (Contract DYXM-115-02-1-01). Some figures were plotted using GMT (Wessel and Smith 1995).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Marginal Sea Geology, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510301, China

    Wei Luo, Minghui Zhao, Jiazheng Zhang, Xuelin Qiu & Yu Ren

  2. The Second Institute of Oceanography, State Oceanic Administration, Hangzhou, 310012, China

    Chunhui Tao

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Wei Luo & Yu Ren

Authors
  1. Wei Luo
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  2. Minghui Zhao
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  3. Jiazheng Zhang
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  4. Chunhui Tao
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  5. Xuelin Qiu
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  6. Yu Ren
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Correspondence to Minghui Zhao.

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Luo, W., Zhao, M., Zhang, J. et al. Relocation of two earthquakes in the Southwest Indian Ridge area combining land seismic stations’ with OBSs’ data. Mar Geophys Res 38, 27–37 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11001-016-9289-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11001-016-9289-9

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