eprintid: 1693 rev_number: 12 eprint_status: archive userid: 6 dir: disk0/00/00/16/93 datestamp: 2016-07-08 07:35:02 lastmod: 2017-02-08 12:21:37 status_changed: 2016-07-08 07:35:02 type: article metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Leptokaropoulos, Konstantinos Michail creators_name: Papadimitriou, Eleftheria E. creators_name: Orlecka-Sikora, Beata creators_name: Karakostas, Vassilios G. creators_id: kleptoka@igf.edu.pl creators_id: ritsa@geo.auth.gr creators_id: orlecka@igf.edu.pl creators_id: vkarak@geo.auth.gr corp_creators: Seismology and Physics of the Earth’s Interior, Institute of GeophysicsPolish Academy of Sciences corp_creators: Department of Geophysics, School of GeologyAristotle University of Thessaloniki corp_creators: Seismology and Physics of the Earth’s Interior, Institute of GeophysicsPolish Academy of Sciences corp_creators: Department of Geophysics, School of GeologyAristotle University of Thessaloniki title: An Evaluation of Coulomb Stress Changes from Earthquake Productivity Variations in the Western Gulf of Corinth, Greece subjects: MP6 subjects: RGR divisions: EPOS-P full_text_status: none keywords: Seismicity rate changes Rate/state friction Static Coulomb stress changes Gulf of Corinth Efpalio January 2010 seismic sequence abstract: Spatial and temporal evolution of the stress field in the seismically active and well-monitored area of the western Gulf of Corinth, Greece, is investigated. The highly accurate and vast regional catalogues were used for inverting seismicity rate changes into stress variation using a rate/state-dependent friction model. After explicitly determining the physical quantities incorporated in the model (characteristic relaxation time, fault constitutive parameters, and reference seismicity rates), we looked for stress changes across space and over time and their possible association with earthquake clustering and fault interactions. We focused our attention on the Efpalio doublet of January 2010 (M = 5.5 and M = 5.4), with a high aftershock productivity, and attempted to reproduce and interpret stress changes prior to and after the initiation of this seismicity burst. The spatial distribution of stress changes was evaluated after smoothing the seismological data by means of a probability density function (PDF). The inverted stress calculations were compared with the calculations derived from an independent approach (elastic dislocation model) and this comparison was quantified. The results of the two methods are in good agreement (up to 80 %) in the far field, with the inversion technique providing more robust results in the near field, where they are more sensitive to the uncertainties of coseismic slip distribution. It is worth mentioning that the stress inversion model proved to be a very sensitive stress meter, able to detect even small stress changes correlated with spatio–temporal earthquake clustering. Data analysis was attempted from 1975 onwards to simulate the stress changes associated with stronger earthquakes over a longer time span. This approach revealed that only M > 5.5 events induce considerable stress variations, although in some cases there was no evidence for such stress changes even after an M > 5.5 earthquake. date: 2016-01 date_type: published publication: Pure and Applied Geophysics volume: 173 number: 1 publisher: Springer Verlag pagerange: 49-72 id_number: doi:10.1007/s00024-015-1057-2 issn: 0033-4553 official_url: http://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-015-1057-2 access_IS-EPOS: limited owner: Publisher citation: Leptokaropoulos, Konstantinos Michail and Papadimitriou, Eleftheria E. and Orlecka-Sikora, Beata and Karakostas, Vassilios G. (2016) An Evaluation of Coulomb Stress Changes from Earthquake Productivity Variations in the Western Gulf of Corinth, Greece. Pure and Applied Geophysics, 173 (1). pp. 49-72. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-015-1057-2