Relocation of hypocenters from DOMERAPI and BMKG networks: a preliminary result from DOMERAPI project

Merapi volcano located in central Java, Indonesia, is one of the most active stratovolcanoes in the world. Many Earth scientists have conducted studies on this volcano using various methods. The geological features around Merapi are very attractive to be investigated because they have been formed by a complex tectonic process and volcanic activities since tens of millions of years ago. The southern mountain range, Kendeng basin and Opak active fault located around the study area resulted from these processes. DOMERAPI project was conducted to understand deep magma sources of the Merapi volcano comprehensively. The DOMERAPI network was running from October 2013 to mid-April 2015 by deploying 46 broad-band seismometers around the volcano. Several steps, i.e., earthquake event identification, arrival time picking of P and S waves, hypocenter determination and hypocenter relocation, were carried out in this study. We used Geiger’s method (Geiger 1912) for hypocenter determination and double-difference method for hypocenter relocation. The relocation result will be used to carry out seismic tomographic imaging of structures beneath the Merapi volcano and its surroundings. For the hypocenter determination, the DOMERAPI data were processed simultaneously with those from the Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG) seismic network in order to minimize the azimuthal gap. We found that the majority of earthquakes occurred outside the DOMERAPI network. There are 464 and 399 earthquakes obtained before and after hypocenter relocation, respectively. The hypocenter relocation result successfully detects some tectonic features, such as a nearly vertical cluster of events indicating a subduction-related backthrust to the south of central Java and a cluster of events to the east of Opak fault suggesting that the fault has an eastward dip.     

Water intrusions and particle signatures in the Black Sea: a Biogeochemical-Argo float investigation

Continuous observations during 3 years with a vertical resolution of 1 dbar from two Bio-Argo floats in the Black Sea that were equipped with oxygen optodes, chlorophyll fluorometers, and backscattering sensors are analyzed. The particle backscattering coefficient, b _bp provides a proxy for the concentration of suspended particles. The observations clearly identify thermal and b _bp intrusions down to ~700–800 m in the Bosporus inflow area. In this area, b _bp is more than five times larger than elsewhere, which could indicate bacterial abundance and possible biological involvement in the precipitation of Mn-containing particles. The b _bp anomalies become much shallower than the temperature anomalies with increasing distance to the east of the strait. Their maxima are located between the onset of the suboxic zone and the upper part of the anoxic layer. Unlike well-known intrusions that are caused by inflow, open ocean intrusions are shallower and often characterized by multiple layers of backscatter maxima with thicknesses of only 15–20 m. The ratio between backscattering coefficients measured at two wavelengths, which gives a proxy for particle size, shows that the relative amount of larger size particles in the anoxic layer increases with depth. The particle concentrations and their size distribution display different vertical variability, which indicates the complex transformation of biological matter. The lower concentration of particles and lower chlorophyll-a during the extremely warm 2016 reveals an overall positive correlation between the two properties. The trends in the particle backscattering coefficient in the suboxic zone during 2013–2016 could indirectly reveal a biogeochemical response to temperature changes.