Improving the resolution of the 2010 Haiti earthquake fault geometry using temporary seismometer deployments

Roby Douilly, Purdue University

Abstract

Haiti has been the locus of a number of large and damaging historical earthquakes. The recent January 12, 2010, Mw 7.0 earthquake affected cities that were largely unprepared, which resulted in tremendous losses. It was initially assumed that the earthquake ruptured the Enriquillo Plantain Garden Fault (EPGF), a major active structure in southern Haiti, known from geodetic measurements and its geomorphic expression to be capable of producing M7 or larger earthquakes. However, GPS and InSAR data showed that the event ruptured a previously unmapped fault, the Léogâne fault, a north dipping oblique blind thrust located immediately north of the Enriquillo Fault. Following the earthquake several groups installed temporary seismic stations to record aftershocks, including ocean bottom seismometers on either side of the EPGF. We use data from the complete set of stations deployed after the event, on land and offshore, to relocate all aftershocks from 10 February to 24 June 2010, to determine a one-dimensional regional crustal velocity model, and calculate focal mechanisms. The aftershock locations from the combined data set clearly delineate the Léogâne fault, with a geometry close to that inferred from geodetic data. Its strike and dip closely agrees with that of the global centroid moment tensor solution of the mainshock, but it is more steeply dipping than the plane inferred from previously determined finite fault inversions. The aftershocks also delineate a structure with shallower southward dip offshore and to the west of the rupture zone, which could indicate triggered seismicity on the offshore Trois Baies reverse fault. We use first-motion focal mechanisms to clarify the relationship of the fault geometry to the triggered aftershocks.

Degree

M.S.

Advisors

Calais, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Geophysics

COinS