Wednesday, August 31, 2011

[Geology2] Institute of Geophysics | Recent information about earthquake swarm in West Bohemia

FYI

The Geophysical Institute, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic says it has recorded almost 10,000 earthquakes during the last three days in West Bohemia, a region located close to the Czech Republic's western border with Germany. The earthquake swarm started late on Tuesday and continued through Friday. While many have gone unnoticed by the local population some of the larger tremors, including eight quakes exceeding 3 magnitude have been felt in the towns of Chemnitz, Karlovy Vary, Birch, and Luby. T

he most recent earthquake measured 3.6 magnitude on the Richter Scale and hit at 0645hrs GMT on Friday at a shallow depth of three miles. The quake epicentre was located 81 miles (129 km) NE of Nrnberg 82 miles (131 km) SW of Dresden, 90 miles (144 km) W of Praha, 128 miles (204 km) NW of Budejovice, 131 miles (210 km) NNW of Schrding, and 227 miles (364 km) NW of Wien. 

Commenting on the latest earthquake swarm, the Geophysical Institute, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic stated:  "The activity started in the evening of 23 August and is almost continuous till now (26 August morning). Almost 10 000 events were recorded in total up to now. Already eight events M>3.0 and 200 M>2.0 occurred. The location of hypocenters directly below the NKC station, so it appears a new patch of the fault plane is being activated." 

n recent years, scientists have noted an increase in the movement of magma towards the earth's surface in the Cheb Basin, western Czech Republic. They say rising magma could be one of the causes of the earthquake swarms, which regularly occur in the Vogtland, North-West Bohemia, the Fichtelgebirge and the Upper Palatinate. The last earthquake swarm to occur before this week's activity was in 2008.








http://www.ig.cas.cz/en/structure/observatories/west-bohemia-seismic-network-webnet/recent-information-about-earthquake-swarm-in-west-bohemia/


Recent information about earthquakes in West Bohemia

  

Earthquake swarm 2011 

Last update: 31.8.2011, 9:40 CEST

 The activity started in the evening of 23 August and is almost continuous till now. Almost 10 000 events were recorded in total up to now. Already six M>3.0 events and hundreds of M>2.0 events occurred. Visit the page "Map of actual earthquakes" to see locations (updated daily).

Time course of event magnitudes. This graph is based on automatic detections and the number of events is not complete.
 
Location of the new swarm upon the main fault plane in Novy Kostel - vertical section
The location of hypocenters is directly below the NKC station, so it appears a new patch of the fault plane is being activated - see the joint plot of all activity in NK area - the recent events are indicated in dark red.
Depth section of hypocenters and magnitude-time distribution; recent activity marked by ellipse 
Day seismograms from NKC station
First day of activity

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