TOWARDS A RAPID MOMENT TENSOR SOLUTION FOR THE HAITI EARTHQUAKE (2010) USING LOCAL STATIONS

The boundaries of the Caribbean plate are deforming as a result of the interaction with the North and South American plates. These regions of deformation generate earthquakes and tsunamis that can be devastating to the islands of the Caribbean basin. Therefore, monitoring seismic activity and tsunami genesis, and alerting vulnerable communities is critical to save lives. This research project seeks to implement a numerical inverse code algorithm for near real-time computation of moment tensors. The algorithm is based on the methodology of Dr. Douglas Dreger from the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory. The approach is to test the algorithm with the recent Mw 7.0 January 12, 2010 Haiti earthquake using data from near-field IU seismic network stations and then lay the foundations for eventual implementation at the Puerto Rico Seismic Network (PRSN). This new methodology is justified by the ability to obtain fault parameters from waveform data for seismic sources close to the stations, thus, decreasing the time necessary to have an estimate calculation of a moment tensor for any major earthquake using regional data, approximately less than 7 minutes of the earthquake's origin time. Here we present results from our Haiti earthquake test, which in turn were compared to moment tensors solutions published by the Global CMT (GCMT) catalog. A maximum of three stations were used in the study. However, we were able to obtain similar results to GCMT and USGS by just using a single station, thus providing evidence the algorithm is a fast, independent and efficient method for obtaining fault parameters for events generated in the vicinity of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. Results from the computation include hypocenter determination for evaluating the tsunamigenic potential, and fault parameters to simulate the tsunami, estimate expected arrival times, and coastal effects for far-field locations within the Caribbean basin.