Imaging an asperity of the 2003 Tokachi-oki earthquake using a dense strong-motion seismograph network

Abstract

The 2003 Tokachi-oki earthquake ruptured a large area of approximately 100 km2. The location of the largest asperity was estimated to be several dozen kilometres offshore of Hokkaido, Japan. The magnitude measured 8.0 on the Japan Meteorological Agency scale, and several studies used waveform inversion analysis to estimate the moment-magnitude as Mw 8.0–8.2. Several studies reported that there was a minor asperity at the northeastern edge of the fault plane, and that the rupture velocity towards the minor asperity was less than that towards the main asperity. One of them illustrated that the location and timing of the minor asperity were poorly constrained. In this paper, we introduce a procedure based on semblance analysis to image the location of the minor northeastern asperity with improved resolution. We group 15 strong-motion seismographs into three arrays, and we perform semblance analysis on impulsive waves that were possibly generated from the minor asperity and were conspicuously observed at stations in eastern Hokkaido. By projecting the semblance values onto the fault plane, we estimate the location of the minor asperity. We find it to be shallower and farther from the coast than the previous results indicated. The average rupture velocity towards the asperity is estimated to be 2.5 km s−1, which is slower than the 3.6 km s−1 obtained by waveform inversion analysis.