Evidence of subduction zone segmentation: Finite-difference tomography
and earthquake relocation along the Java margin
Abstract
The Java margin is part of the 5600 km long Sunda Arc subduction zone
that extends from Sumatra to the Lesser Sunda Islands and is dominated
by earthquakes with magnitude less than 7. Although several 7.0 ≤ Mw
< 8.0 earthquakes have occurred, there has been an absence of
Mw>8. Previous earthquake relocation studies have mainly
focused on the ml ≥ 4 earthquakes, while seismic tomography studies have
mainly focused on the volcanic system in Central and East Java. In this
study, we aim to image the entirety of Java margin to investigate
segmentation along this margin. We use the arrival time dataset from
2009 – 2018 collected from 44 stations in the BMKG national seismic
network to relocate earthquakes and invert for seismic velocity
structure along the Java margin using a finite-difference tomography
algorithm. A total of 6041 earthquakes, 68250 P- and 22795 S-phases, ml
1.9 – 7.5, were included in the inversion, resulting in 4883
high-quality relocations. The distribution of relocated events shows
several isolated clusters of seismicity at the trench, which are
distributed nearly vertical, from the near-surface to 80 km depth.
Feature with Vp/Vs ~ 1.73, which higher compared to
value along the trench, coincides to one of the isolated clusters. Gaps
are observed between bands of seismicity at the trench and beneath the
forearc region. The seismicity is distributed surrounding or between the
high anomalies of residual bathymetry which represent the structure of
the subducting slab. Beneath the forearc, bands of seismicity are
observed between 30 – 80 km depth and below 100 km depth. Their
distribution reveals a steeper slab geometry relative to previously
published slab models (Slab 1.0 and Slab 2.0). Several features with
Vp/Vs < 1.70 and higher Vp and Vs than the surrounding area
coincides with the bands of seismicity observed between 30 – 80 km
depth. Shallow structure is also well defined by the earthquake
relocations outlining three major faults (Cimandiri, Kencana-Rakutai
faults, and an unnamed fault located east of Opak fault). The relocation
results and velocity structure show that the distribution of seismicity
along the subduction zone is segmented. This segmentation is likely
related to the structure of the subducting plate.