High temporal resolution monitoring of small variations in crustal strain by dense seismic arrays

Abstract

©2018. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. We demonstrate the feasibility of detecting very weak deformation in the shallow crust with high temporal resolution by monitoring the relative changes in seismic wave velocity (dv/v) using dense arrays of seismometers. We show that the dv/v variations are consistent between independent measurements from two seismic arrays. Dominant peaks in the observed dv/v spectrum suggest that tides and temperature changes are the major causes of daily and subdaily velocity changes, in accordance with theoretical strain modeling. Our analysis illustrates that dv/v perturbations of the order of 10−4, corresponding to crustal strain changes of the order of 10−8, can be measured from ambient seismic noise with a temporal resolution of 1 hr. This represents a low-cost technique for high precision and high time-resolution monitoring of crustal deformation that is complementary to existing geodetic measurements and is instrumental in both the detection and understanding of low-amplitude precursory processes of natural catastrophic events.