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Dynamic triggering of seismic activity in Halmahera, Indonesia induced by

2016 Mw 7.7 solomon earthquake

Conference Paper  in  AIP Conference Proceedings · July 2018

DOI: 10.1063/1.5047320

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Dynamic triggering of seismic activity in Halmahera, Indonesia induced by 2016 Mw 7.7
solomon earthquake
Renhard Sipayung, Sugeng Pribadi, and Dimas Sianipar

Citation: AIP Conference Proceedings 1987, 020035 (2018); doi: 10.1063/1.5047320

View online: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5047320
View Table of Contents: http://aip.scitation.org/toc/apc/1987/1
Published by the American Institute of Physics

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 Dynamic Triggering of Seismic Activity in Halmahera,
Indonesia Induced by 2016 Mw 7.7 Solomon Earthquake

Renhard Sipayung1,a), Sugeng Pribadi1,2, Dimas Sianipar1,2

1
Agency for Meteorology Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG), Angkasa I Street No. 2, Jakarta, Indonesia
10720
2
Meteorological Climatological and Geophysical State College (STMKG), Perhubungan I Street No.
5,PondokBetung, Banten, Indonesia 15221

a)
Corresponding author: renhard.sipayung@bmkg.go.id

Abstract. The tectonic setting of Halmahera is the one of the most complicated as well as interested to be studied in
Indonesia. There was also an unusual energetic swarm in West Halmahera that concentrated near Jailolo volcano. Large
earthquake can trigger stress perturbation on the fault system and sometimes cause new earthquake both in the same fault
and far distance. We examined Mw 7.7 Solomon earthquakewhich empirically impart dynamic stress larger than 1 kPa to
Halmahera region in Northern Moluccas, Indonesia. Using restricted seismic data from 7G temporary network which had
been installed by Agency for Meteorology Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG) and GeoForschungsZentrum (GFZ), we
identified remotely triggered seismicity. Here we provide a potential of dynamic triggering as large as 12.53kPa of stress
impart from Mw 7.7 Solomon earthquake on beginning of December 2016 caused seismic activity in this isolated region. We
are certain that Halmahera as geothermal region unresisted with the high stress accumulation, although with a small transient
stress perturbation the local earthquake or tremor probably occurred. This research also supported previous finding that
remote triggering was not as widespread as previous study.

Keywords: dynamic triggering, stress transfer, Halmahera

INTRODUCTION

The tectonic setting of Halmahera is the one of the most complicated and unique in the world. Halmahera
lies at the intersection of four rigid plates, the Australian, the Philippine Sea, the Eurasian and the East
Mindanao Plates [1]. Active seismicity in this region was confirmed by the evidence of earthquake swarm
during November - December 2015. During that swarm, a seismic station located in Ternate, Halmahera
recorded at least 1000 earthquakes with M ≥ 1.0 and 11 earthquakes with M ≥ 4.5, and surprisingly the amount
of that energy is equivalent to a single M 8.3 earthquake [2]. The seismic activity during this earthquake swarm
was concentrated in Jailolo and its surrounding area,in particular the seismicity clusters centered in Jailolo
volcano [2].

An earthquake can be triggered by local changes in the stress field (static triggering) due to nearby
earthquake’s displacement or by stresses caused by the passage of surface waves from a remote, large
earthquake (dynamic triggering) [3]. As illustrated in Figure 1, their triggering potential extend from the local
region to much greater distances than static stress changes because the amplitude of dynamic stresses
propagating as seismic waves decrease relatively slowly with distance [4].

International Symposium on Earth Hazard and Disaster Mitigation (ISEDM) 2017

AIP Conf. Proc. 1987, 020035-1–020035-6; https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5047320
Published by AIP Publishing. 978-0-7354-1703-8/$30.00

020035-1
 Figure 1. Illustration of differences between static and dynamic stresses. ∆CFF is the static Coloumb stresses
and δCFF(t) is the dynamic stress (time-dependent version of ∆CFF). The peak values of ∆CFF and δCFF(t)
denotes by double arrows [4, 5].

Figure 2. Map of the study region. A beach ball showing the location of the mainshock and thick red striped
rectangle for area to be studied.

On 8th December 2016 at 17:38:46 UTC has occurred Mw 7.7 Solomon earthquake with epicenter in
10.6810S – 11.3270E with depth 40.0 km, compiled from USGS earthquake catalog. This earthquake occurred as
a result of shallow, slightly reverse faulting on the plate boundary between the Australia and Pacific plates.
Focal mechanism solutions indicate that rupture occurred on either a northwest or north-south-striking,
moderately dipping reverse fault as show in Figure 2. This major earthquake can be recorded by a seismometer
in a radius of several thousand kilometers, including Indonesia, especially Halmahera. Formed as
heterogeneities crust structure, it is expected that Halmahera region unresisted the high stress accumulation,
although with a small transient stress perturbation local earthquake or tremor probably occurred.

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 Here we report our work in investigating the effects of dynamic stress changes caused by the Mw 7.8
Solomon earthquake that occurred on 8th December 2016 towards the seismicity in the region of Halmahera
which separated above 4000 km from the epicenter.

DATA AND METHOD

This study used restricted seismic data from 7G Seismic Network which located in Jailolo, West
Halmahera, Indonesia[6]. There were 35 seismometers installed by GFZ-Potsdam and BMKG with details of 6
Broadband stations (BB01-BB06) and 29 ShortPeriod stations (SP01-SP29) which location can be seen in
Figure 3. Before we strongly expected that the 8th December 2016 Mw 7.7 Solomon earthquake can trigger
microearthquakes in Halmahera, we systematically analyzed 27 teleseismic events occured from August 2016 to
February 2017, with distance > 1000 km from its epicenter and Mw > 6,0 with emphasis to calculate its
transient stress imparted to Halmahera region. This limitation of time were conducted based on the availability
of the seismic data.

We downloaded the waveform spanning a half hour before and two hours after the origin time of Mw 7.7
Solomon earthquake from http://eida.gfz-potsdam.de/webdc3/. The analysis proceduregenerally follows Peng et
al. [11], first we converted the waveform from SEED to SAC format used rdseed. Furthermore, we used
SAC(Seismic Analysis Code) to analyze the seismic signals. Then we corrected raw waveform data of all three
components by removing instrument response and then we got velocity waveforms. Transverse and radial
componentswere obtained from rotating N-S and E-W components along the great circle path.

Figure 3. Map of 7G Seismic Network which is installed at Jailolo, West Halmahera. The Broadband
seismometers are marked by red triangles and blue triangles for the ShortPeriod seismometers.

We computed the spectrogram of three-component waveforms to help us investigated the local triggered
event. Moreover the spectrogram can also be used as a guide to determine the frequency corner to filter seismic
waveform. Remotely triggered local seismic events generally contain relatively higher frequencies and can be
distinguished from teleseismic signals with lower frequencies [3]. Here we used a Butterworth band-pass filter
from 0.001 - 1 Hz to remove potential high-frequency from noise during the mainshock long-period surface
waves. For local seismic signals, we applied a higher range of band-pass filter as big as2 - 8 Hz. We identified
remotely local earthquake triggered in Halmahera by visual inspection of clear high-frequency signals during
and right after the Mw 7.7 Solomon earthquake teleseismic waves. These possible triggered events were
distinguished by examining their phase arrivals [7]. In addition, we calculated the value of dynamic stress
transfer which can be determined by formulation:

(1)

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with the crusts shear modulus G 35 GPa, the peak ground velocity induced by the seismic waves and the
S-wave velocity assuming 3.5 km/s [8]. Many previous studies represented that the estimated dynamic stress
is the mainly controls of triggering potential. So here we compared the dynamic stress imparted by Mw 7.7
Solomon earthquake to Halmahera with other mainshock towards certain isolated region as apparent local
earthquake threshold indirectly [9].

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

We successfully identified dynamic triggering of local earthquake in Halmahera induced by 8 December

2016 Mw 7.7 Solomon earthquake. The spectrogram in Figure 4a contained all of frequency content recorded by
station BB02 which was installed in Halmahera during mainshock seismic waves propagated there. The
teleseismic waves from Solomon earthquake has < 5 Hz frequency content denoted by different color on
spectrogram. The burst of high frequency content in the span of 1380 – 1450 s after the origin time Solomon
earthquake as we expected as triggered earthquake which shown straightly with red dashed line.

Stacked instrument-corrected transversal, radial and vertical velocity seismograms of teleseismic waves are
showing in Figure 4b. We cannot see that local seismic signals clearly based on eye-checking in this term.
Otherwise, when we applied band-filtered (2-8 Hz), as show in Figure 4c, the only visible signals were locally
seismic with slightly P wave frequency content originated from 8 December 2016 Mw 7.7 Solomon earthquake
as mainshock which predicted P wave arrivals marked by black dashed line. As the main purpose of this study,
we found higher amplitude waves bounded by red dashed line and occurred during surface wave propagation.
This is consistent with the burst frequency content on spectrogram.

Figure 4. Earthquake triggered in Halmahera by the 8 December 2016 Mw 7.7 Solomon earthquake. (a)
Spectrogram of tranverse component from station BB02 with high frequency content denoted the local
earthquake. (b) Instrument-corrected rotated Broadband velocity seismograms band-pass filtered (0.001 -1 Hz)
to represent the teleseismic waves from mainshock. (c) Vertical component seismogram band-pass filtered (2-8
Hz) to bordered local seismic signals. Red dashed line show the triggered earthquake in the teleseismic surface
waves phase.

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 Figure 5. Vertical seismograms of 25 sensor 7G Seismic Network band-pass filtered (2-8 Hz) during the 8
December 2016 Mw 7.7 Solomon earthquake surface waves propagated in Halmahera. Red lines mark the
predicted arrivals of the P wave from triggered local earthquake. The bottom three traces show the instrument-
corrected Broadband velocity seismograms at station BB02 band-pass filtered (0.001-1 Hz).

To make sure that was an earthquake triggering, here we shows 25 vertical seismograms bandpass filtered
(2-8 Hz) during the 8 December 2016 Mw 7.7 Solomon earthquake surface waves. We can clearly see the P
wave’s onset of triggered earthquake marked by red lines in Figure 5. The low frequency signals at the bottom
three traces shows the form of surface waves from mainshock recorded by BB02 station during earthquake
triggering. Here we can see an increased of amplitude occurred at transversal component shortly before
triggering process and perhaps as the main role of this term as we expected.

Based on equation (1), the 8 December 2016 Mw 7.7 Solomon earthquake carriedabout 12.53 kPa to Jailolo
region and this number corresponds with PGV from the surface waves approximately 0.1253 cm/s [7]. Many
research has widely found dynamic triggering process was generated at this number even lower that it. For
example, Aiken and Peng [7] were examined microearthquakes triggered in Geyser Geothermal field and the
triggering earthquakes were 23 June 2001 M8.4 Peru (5 kPa), 22 January 2003 M7.6 Colima (4 kPa), 4 January
2006 M6.6 Baja California (4 kPa), 13 January 2007 M8.1 Kuril Islands (12 kPa), 3 August 2009 M6.9 Baja
California (21 kPa), 10 January 2010 M6.5 Northern California (10 kPa), 27 February 2010 M8.8 Chile (9 kPa),
and 4 April 2010 M7.2 Baja California (29 kPa) earthquakes.

Geothermal region like Halmahera is widely recognized has a low dynamic triggering threshold and we
assured that the dynamic stress produced by 8 December 2016 Mw 7.7 Solomon earthquake (12.53 kPa) was not
the smallest stress transfer which can generated dynamic triggering in Halmahera. This inference referred to
previous explanation even 4 kPa was able to lead dynamic triggering and another study [10].

The PGV of the teleseismic surface waves is one of the most important factors in controlling the dynamic
triggering [9, 11]. However, we need to quantify another triggering potential which depends on incidence angle
[12, 13], frequency [11, 13, 14], background tremor rate [13], and background noise [15] to further understand
dynamic triggering process in Halmahera.

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 CONCLUSION

The 8 December 2016 Mw 7.7 Solomon earthquake triggered local earthquake in Halmahera and produced
12.53 kPa of transient stress. Comparing the local seismic to teleseismic signals at the same spanning time was
the things to do to investigate dynamic triggering process. The spectrogram can be used as a guidance to
determine the frequency corner for filtering the seismic waveforms. Halmahera as a geothermal region has a low
dynamic threshold, at the specific conditions, we are supposed that dynamic stress transfer lower than 12.53 kPa
has a capacity to triggering local earthquake there.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank Agency for Meteorology Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG) and GeoForschungsZentrum
(GFZ) for the seismic data from 7G Seismic Network that we used here.

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