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Source location of long period seismicity at Volcàn de Colima, México

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Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of seismicity associated with the volcanic activity of Volcàn de Colima (México) and recorded in the period November 2005–April 2006 during a field survey by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)–Osservatorio Vesuviano, the Observatorio Vulcanologico de Colima of Colima University and the Instituto Andaluz de Geofisica, University of Granada. Three different types of volcanic earthquakes have been identified on the basis of their spectral properties: Type A (0.3–1 Hz), Type B (1–5 Hz) and Type C (3–4 Hz). Results of polarization analysis applied to Type A events show a predominance of radial motion, indicating that the wavefield comprises compressional waves (P) and shear waves polarized in the vertical plane (SV), while the signal always begins with a negative polarity. Type A, B and C earthquakes have been located using both a flat layered model and a 3D model including topography. Hypocentre distributions indicate that the source of Type A signals is very shallow and confined to a small volume lying about 1 km below the crater. In contrast, the source of Type B and C events is significantly deeper, with most hypocentres located in a volume of about 1 km3 centred at 2.5–3 km depth. A cluster analysis based on the cross-correlation among the waveforms of different events recorded at the same station was applied to Type A earthquakes. Only two clusters, which include only a small percentage of events were found, indicating that earthquake families were uncommon during the period of our survey.

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Acknowledgements

The Colima field survey was mainly funded by FIRB 2-13-3-46-23, Italy. Gabriel Reyes-Dávila is greatly acknowledged for having provided the seismic data recorded by the Colima Telemetric Seismic Network (RESCO). Giuseppe Vilardo and Rosa Nappi are acknowledged for preliminary analysis of topography data from the web site http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org. Many figures were drawn by the software GMT (Wessel and Smith 1998). Earthquake location has been done using the software NonLinLoc available at the web site http://alomax.free.fr/nlloc. We thank Anthony Lomax for his kind and useful suggestions about the software usage, and Silvio De Angelis for his comments that helped us to improve this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione di Napoli—Osservatorio Vesuviano, Via Diocleziano 328, 80124, Naples, Italy

    Simona Petrosino, Paola Cusano, Mario La Rocca, Danilo Galluzzo & Edoardo Del Pezzo

  2. Observatorio Vulcanologico, Universidad de Colima, Colima, Mexico

    Justo Orozco-Rojas & Mauricio Bretón

  3. Instituto Andaluz de Geofısica, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain

    Jesus Ibáñez

  4. Departamento de Fısica Teorica y del Cosmos, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain

    Jesus Ibáñez

Authors
  1. Simona Petrosino
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  2. Paola Cusano
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  3. Mario La Rocca
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  4. Danilo Galluzzo
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  5. Justo Orozco-Rojas
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  6. Mauricio Bretón
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  7. Jesus Ibáñez
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  8. Edoardo Del Pezzo
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Correspondence to Simona Petrosino.

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Editorial responsibility: M. Ripepe

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Petrosino, S., Cusano, P., La Rocca, M. et al. Source location of long period seismicity at Volcàn de Colima, México. Bull Volcanol 73, 887–898 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-011-0447-2

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