Overpressurized fluids drive microseismic swarm activity around Mt. Ontake volcano, Japan

Microseismic swarm activity has taken place since 1976 around Mt. Ontake, the second highest stratovolcano in Japan. This activity is thought to be linked to high pore-fluid pressure in the vicinity of the volcano. We analyzed well-constrained focal mechanism solutions of microseismicity to re-estimate the 3-D pore-fluid pressure field driving vigorous swarm activity around Mt. Ontake. Pore-fluid pressures were measured by mapping earthquake focal mechanisms on the 3-D Mohr diagram for the regional stress field with high resolutions of 2–5 km. The assumption of the reference stress pattern can cause modeling errors in measurements of pore-fluid pressure. To remove the effect, we statistically evaluated the estimation errors of the regional stress field and included these errors in the analysis. We detected an overpressurized fluid reservoir with a peak of about 10–30 MPa in the east flank of Mt. Ontake, where microseismic swarm activity has been vigorous for the last two decades. The level of pore-fluid pressure was maintained for at least 5 years after 2009. This finding indicates that there are some interactions between the intensive swarm activity and overpressurized fluids: the swarm activity has been driven by overpressurized fluids, whereas porefluid pressures have been suppressed by the swarm activity.