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New Velocity Structure of the Nový Kostel Earthquake-Swarm Region, West Bohemia, Determined by the Isometric Inversion

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Abstract

The intraplate West Bohemia region is characterized by relatively frequent earthquake swarms mostly concentrated in the vicinity of the Nový Kostel village. Records of selected microearthquakes of the 2008 seismic swarm from a small circular area around Nový Kostel with a radius of 11 km are processed with focus on availability of precise onset readings from all the selected events at all the selected stations. These data were used in the joint hypocenter-velocity inversion, employing the so-called isometric method which is especially efficient for this task. The results are two new one-dimensional velocity models, the constrained (smoother) and the unconstrained one, of the upper crust down to the depth of 11 km, and absolute locations of the selected earthquakes in the new constrained model. The foci delineate two segments of a steeply dipping fault zone. Time residuals at each of the stations display a remarkable azimuthal dependence, for both P and S waves, caused by anisotropy. No systematic dependence on epicentral distance was found even for stations outside the target area, which means that the new 1D models seem to be reasonable approximations of the real structure in the whole, much larger, West Bohemia region. No time dependence indicating possible changes of \(v_P\), \(v_S\) and their ratio during the swarm was observed. A set of P- and S-wave station corrections that should be used to correct onset times in order to reach precise absolute locations was derived as an integral part of the new models.

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Acknowledgements

Inverted data were provided by the WEBNET network (doi:10.7914/SN/WB). This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, Project LTAUSA19083. The authors wish to thank to A. Boušková for cooperation in the onset time readings and to Jan Valenta for providing \(v_{P30}\) and \(v_{S30}\) values measured in the area.

Funding

This study was supported by Ministerstvo Školství, Mládeže a Tělovýchovy grant number (LTAUSA19083).

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  1. Department of Seismotectonics, Institute of Rock Structure and Mechanics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

    Jiří Málek

  2. Department of Geophysics, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

    Johana Brokešová & Oldřich Novotný

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Málek, J., Brokešová, J. & Novotný, O. New Velocity Structure of the Nový Kostel Earthquake-Swarm Region, West Bohemia, Determined by the Isometric Inversion. Pure Appl. Geophys. 180, 2111–2134 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-023-03250-w

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