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Earthquake swarms preceding the 2000 eruption of Miyakejima volcano, Japan

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Abstract

The first sign of magma accumulating beneath Miyakejima, an island volcano in the northern Izu islands, Japan, came at around 18:00 on 26 June 2000, when a swarm of earthquakes was detected by a volcano seismic network on the island. Earthquakes occurred initially beneath the southwest flank near the summit and gradually migrated west of the island, where a submarine eruption occurred the next morning. Earthquakes then migrated further to the northwest between Miyakejima and Kozushima, another volcanic island and developed to the most intense earthquake swarm ever observed in and around Japanese archipelago. To better image how the initial magma intrusion occurred, we relocated hypocenters by using a station-correction method and a double-difference method. The relocated epicenters are generally concentrated near the upper bound of dyke intrusions inferred from geodetic studies throughout the initial stages of the 2000 eruption at Miyakejima from 26 to 27 June 2000. As for seismic activity westward off Miyakejima in the morning on 27 June, hypocenters from both a nationwide seismic network that were relocated by the double-difference method, and those from the volcano seismic network relocated by the station-correction method, formed a very shallow cluster that ascended slowly with time as it propagated northwestward from Miyakejima. This suggests that the dykes have both a radial and upward component of movement.

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate Dr. Felix Waldhauser for kindly sending us the software of the double-difference method. We also acknowledge Dr. Hideki Ueda for providing us with their latest results that are indispensable for discussing magmatic intrusion beneath Miyakejima. Thanks are extended to the Earthquake Research Institute of the University of Tokyo and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government headquarters for allowing us to use their seismic data

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Correspondence to K. Uhira.

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Editorial responsibility: S. Nakada, T. Druitt

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Uhira, K., Baba, T., Mori, H. et al. Earthquake swarms preceding the 2000 eruption of Miyakejima volcano, Japan. Bull Volcanol 67, 219–230 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-004-0405-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-004-0405-3

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