The 2018 Lake Muir earthquake sequence, southwest Western Australia: rethinking Australian stable continental region earthquakes

Abstract

Abstract. Modern geodetic and seismic monitoring tools are enabling the study of moderate-sized earthquake sequences in unprecedented detail. Here we use a variety of methods to examine surface deformation caused by a sequence of earthquakes near Lake Muir in southwest Western Australia in 2018. A shallow MW 5.3 earthquake on the 16th of September 2018 was followed on the 8th of November 2018 by a MW 5.2 event in the same region. Focal mechanisms for the events suggest reverse and strike-slip rupture, respectively. Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) analysis of the events suggests that the ruptures are in part spatially coincident. Field mapping, guided by the InSAR results, reveals that the first event produced an approximately 3\u2009km long and up to 0.5 m high west-facing surface rupture, consistent with slip on a moderately east-dipping fault. Double difference hypocentre relocation of aftershocks using data from rapidly deployed seismic instrumentation confirms an east-dipping rupture plane for the first event, and shows a concentration located at the northern end of the rupture where the InSAR suggests greatest vertical displacement. The November event resulted from rupture on a northeast-trending strike-slip fault. UAV-derived digital terrain models (differenced with pre-event LiDAR) reveal a surface deformation envelope consistent with the InSAR for the first event, but could not discern deformation unique to the second event. New rupture length versus magnitude scaling relationships developed for non-extended cratonic regions as part of this study allow for the distinction between “visible” surface rupture lengths (VSRL) from field-mapping and “detectable” surface rupture lengths (DSRL) from remote sensing techniques such as InSAR, and suggest longer ruptures for a given magnitude than implied by commonly used scaling relationships.