Nuevas evidencias de la actividad sísmica del terreno Cuyania en la región de subducción de placa horizontal de Argentina

Abstract

The Cuyania terrane in the Andean backarc region between 29°S and 34°S consists of the thin-skinned Precordillera fold and thrust belt and of the Western Sierras Pampeanas thick-skinned basement cored uplifts. At about 31°S, the region is highly seismically active at crustal levels (< 35 km depth) and intermediate depths (~100 km). This deeper seismic activity delimitates the Wadati-Benioff zone showing a geometry of the subducted Nazca plate nearly horizontal beneath South America in good correlation with the location of the Juan Fernandez ridge, which seems to continue its subduction to the northeast beneath the continental plate. In this paper we present the results of the seismic moment tensor inversion for five crustal earthquakes that occurred in 2008 and 2009 with epicenters in the Cuyania terrane and its boundaries. We provide refined information of the seismic location, seismic moment (M0), moment magnitude (Mw), focal depth and fault parameters of the focal mechanisms for these earthquakes. The seismic source characterization was obtained after modeling the three component full seismic broadband waveforms recorded by the SIerras Pampeanas Experiment using a Multicomponent BRoadband Array (SIEMBRA) local network.

skinned Precordillera fold and thrust belt and of the Western Sierras Pampeanas thick-skinned basement cored uplifts. At about 31°S, the region is highly seismically active at crustal levels (< 35 km depth) and intermediate depths (~100 km). This deeper seismic activity delimitates the Wadati-Benioff zone showing a geometry of the subducted Nazca plate nearly horizontal beneath South America in good correlation with the location of the Juan Fernandez ridge, which seems to continue its subduction to the northeast beneath the continental plate. In this paper we present the results of the seismic moment tensor inversion for five crustal earthquakes that occurred in 2008 and 2009 with epicenters in the Cuyania terrane and its boundaries. We provide refined information of the seismic location, seismic moment (M0), moment magnitude (Mw), focal depth and fault parameters of the focal mechanisms for these earthquakes. The seismic source characterization was obtained after modeling the three component full seismic broadband waveforms recorded by the SIerras Pampeanas Experiment using a Multicomponent BRoadband Array (SIEMBRA) local network.