Preliminary results of microearthquake survey, Northern Adak Island, Alaska

Nine MEQ-800 portable seismic systems were emplaced and recordings taken during the 30 day period between September 5 to October 4, 1982. During this interval 190 events were correlated on two or more stations by Mincomp. Twenty four of these, seen on four or more stations and considered to be local in origin, yielded, according to Mincomp, reasonable hypocenters and origin times using a homogeneous earth model having a velocity of 5 km/sec. A plot of these hypocenters showed much of the microearthquake activity recorded during the survey to be located beneath Mt. Adagdak. This is different from the events located by the Butler and Keller (1974) microearthquake survey which placed hypocenters beneath the sea in Andrew Bay north and northwest of Mt. Adagdak. Butler and Keller did project a fault plane to the surface which would project southwest through Mt. Adagdak and Andrew Bay Volcano. ESL hypocenter locations using the layered earth model show many of the identified events to occur on the northeast corner of the island at focal depths of 8-10 km. It is not obvious that the observed events are related to a single active fault. If so, the fault must be at a low dip angle as shown by the least-squares-fit to the data on Figure 3. Alternatively, the majority of the events occurring within a fairly restrictive range of focal depths may be more indicative of a magma chamber and the movement of magma. Further interpretation of the microearthquake data obtained during 1982 is, however, outside the scope of this report. The relatively small error ellipses for hypocenter locations, compared to the distribution of hypocenters shown on Plates V and VI lead us to question the validity of the projection of all hypocenters to define a single fault location and orientation. It is apparent that two or more structures could be indicated by the present data and that these structures intersect near the north end of Adak island. The occurrence of most events in a narrow depth range would lead to considerable error in projecting a single fault plane to its surface intersection