Waveforms clustering and single-station location of microearthquake multiplets recorded in the northern Sicilian offshore region

In 2009 December, the OBSLab-INGV (Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia) deployed an Ocean Bottom Seismometer with Hydrophone (OBS/H) near the epicentral area of the main shock of the Palermo seismic sequence of 2002. The monitoring activity had a total duration of about 8 months. During this experiment, the OBS/H recorded 247 very local microearthquakes, whose local magnitude is between −0.5 and 2.5 and T S − T P delay time between 0.2 and 5 s, almost all of which were undetected by the Italian National Seismic Network. This local microseismicity has been analysed using an innovative clustering technique that exploits the similarity between the waveforms generated by different events. The clustering technique implemented, based on hierarchical agglomerative algorithms, nearest neighbour technique and dendrogram representation, allowed us to identify nine distinct multiplets characterized by a high degree of similarity between the waveforms. The microevents were located through an improved single-station location (SSL) technique based on the polarization analysis of the 3C signals and on the estimation of the T S − T P time. In the new SSL technique, an unbiased covariance matrix was defined and a ray tracer-based determination of the epicentral distance and hypocentral depth was proposed. All the multiplets were generated by events with hypocentres that were very close to each other. However, not all the identified clusters are also clustered in the time-magnitude domain. It was also observed that some multiplets have clouds of hypocentres overlapping each other. These clusters, indistinguishable without the application of a waveforms clustering technique, show differences in the waveforms that must be attributed to differences in the focal mechanisms which generated the waveforms. The local seismic events recorded are typical of a seismicity generated by a volume characterized by a highly complex fracturing pattern and by an important role in the dynamics of fluid systems that, given the great depth of some multiplets, could come from the mantle. This picture is in agreement with the geometric characterization of the Palermo 2002 seismogenic volume.