Imaging widespread seismicity at midlower crustal depths beneath Long Beach, CA, with a dense seismic array: Evidence for a depth-dependent earthquake size distribution

We use a dense seismic array composed of 5200 vertical geophones to monitor microseismicity in Long Beach, California. Poor signal-to-noise ratio due to anthropogenic activity is mitigated via downward-continuation of the recorded wavefield. The downward-continued data are continuously back projected to search for coherent arrivals from sources beneath the array, which reveals numerous, previously undetected events. The spatial distribution of seismicity is uncorrelated with the mapped fault traces, or with activity in the nearby oil-fields. Many events are located at depths larger than 20 km, well below the commonly accepted seismogenic depth for that area. The seismicity exhibits temporal clustering consistent with Omori’s law, and its size distribution obeys the Gutenberg-Richter relation above 20 km but falls off exponentially at larger depths. The dense array allows detection of earthquakes two magnitude units smaller than the permanent seismic network in the area. Because the event size distribution above 20 km depth obeys a power law whose exponent is near one, this improvement yields a hundred-fold decrease in the time needed for effective characterization of seismicity in Long Beach.