The role of fluids in earthquake swarms in northeastern Noto Peninsula, central Japan: insights from source mechanisms

Abstract A prolonged earthquake swarm has persisted since June 2018 in northeastern Noto Peninsula (central Japan), with activity focused into distinct southern, western, northern, and eastern clusters. To explore the role of fluids in the occurrence of this swarm, we analyzed the focal mechanisms of the earthquakes occurring from 1 January 2018 to 30 November 2022 and performed stress tensor inversions. The western, northern, and eastern clusters were dominated by a reverse fault-type mechanism with a horizontal P-axis oriented NW–SE. One of the nodal planes of those mechanisms aligns closely with the precisely relocated hypocenter distribution. The stress fields in these three clusters, as determined by stress tensor inversion, have maximum principal stresses oriented horizontally in the NW–SE direction and minimum principal stresses oriented vertically, aligning with the regional stress field. From these focal mechanisms and this stress field, we derived small misfit angles and large slip tendencies. These findings suggest that, in these three clusters, fluids diffused into faults largely aligned with the regional stress field, resulting in earthquakes with compatible focal mechanisms. Conversely, normal and strike-slip fault-type focal mechanisms, which are unfavorable to the regional stress field, dominated in the southern cluster. The estimated stress fields, deviating from the regional stress field, have maximum principal stresses closer to vertical and minimum principal stress oriented horizontally in the ENE–WSW direction. For earthquakes deeper than 15 km, this local stress field results in relatively larger misfit angles and lower slip tendency than the other clusters. These results suggest that those earthquakes in the southern cluster occurred on misoriented fault planes due to elevated pore fluid pressures. These findings provide strong evidence of the ascent of high-pore-pressure fluids from depth in the southern cluster and their subsequent diffusion into a southeast-dipping fault zone. Graphical Abstract