The Pollino seismic sequence: Can shear wave anisotropy monitoring help earthquakes forecast?

Abstract

Since the late the late ’60s-early ’70s era seismologists started developed theories that included variations of the elastic property of the Earth crust and the state of stress and its evolution crust prior to the oc- currence of a large earthquake. Among the others the theory of the dilatancy (Scholz et al., 1973): when a rock is subject to stress, the rock grains are shifted generating micro-cracks, thus the rock itself in- creases its volume. Inside the fractured rock, fluid saturation and pore pressure play an important role in earthquake nucleation, by modulating the effective stress. Thus measuring the variations of wave speed and of anisotropic parameter in time can be highly informative on how the stress leading to a major fault failure builds up. In 80s and 90s such kind of research on earthquake precursor slowed down and the priority was given to seismic hazard and ground motions studies, which are very important since these are the basis for the building codes in many countries. Today we have dense and sophisticated seismic networks to measure wave-fields characteristics: we archive continuous waveform data recorded at three components broad-band seismometers, we almost routinely obtain high resolution ear- thquake locations. Therefore we are ready to start to systematically look at seismic-wave propagation properties to possibly reveal short-term variations in the elastic properties of the Earth crust. In active fault areas and volcanoes, tectonic stress variation influences fracture field orientation and fluid migration processes, whose evolution with time can be monitored through the measurement of the anisotropic pa- rameters ( Piccinini et al., 2006). Through the study of S waves anisotropy it is therefore potentially possible to measure the presence, migration and state of the fluid in the rock traveled by seismic waves, thus providing a valuable route to understanding the seismogenic phenomena and their precursors (Crampin & Gao, 2010). Variations of anisotropic parameter and of the ratio between the compressional (P-wave) and the shear (S-wave) seismic velocities, the Vp/Vs (Nur, 1972) have been recently observed and measured during the preparatory phase of a major earthquake (Lucente et al. 2010). Here we show the anisotropic parameters at station MMN during the Pollino seismic sequence 2010-2013.