The Geodetic Centroid (gCent) Catalog: Global earthquake monitoring with satellite imaging geodesy

Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
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Abstract

Remote sensing geodetic observations (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar [InSAR] and optical correlation [“pixel tracking”]) serve an increasingly diverse and important role in earthquake monitoring and response. This study introduces the Geodetic Centroid (gCent) catalog—an earthquake catalog derived solely from space‐based geodetic observations—and analysis of 74 earthquakes (MW4.3–7.4) imaged from 1 August 2019 to 01 February 2022. For gCent, we use InSAR and optical correlation observations derived from the Sentinel‐1 satellites and various publicly available optical satellites to systematically image all global earthquakes MW 5.5 or larger and shallower than 25 km, MW 7.0 or larger at any depth, and other high‐impact earthquakes or seismic events of special interest. We invert surface displacements from successfully imaged earthquakes for the location, orientation, and dimensions of a single slipping fault patch that describes the centroid characteristics of the earthquake. These centroid models, in turn, are compiled into a catalog and used in U.S. Geological Survey/Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS) operational earthquake response products such as ShakeMaps and finite‐fault models. We provide a comparison of the gCent catalog to the ANSS Comprehensive Catalog and Global Centroid Moment Tensor (Global CMT) catalog to compare reported locations, depths, and magnitudes. We find that global earthquake catalogs not only generally provide reasonably comparable locations (within 10 km on average), but also they systematically overestimate depth that may have implications for earthquake shaking predictions based solely on earthquake origin information. Geodetic magnitudes are comparable to seismically inferred magnitudes, indicating that gCent models are unlikely to be systematically biased by the presence of postseismic deformation. We additionally highlight limitations of the gCent catalog induced by both the limitations of remote sensing imaging of earthquakes and our imposition of a simplified earthquake source description that does not include spatially distributed slip.

Suggested Citation

Barnhart, W.D., and Shea, H.N., 2022, The Geodetic Centroid (gCent) Catalog: Global earthquake monitoring with satellite imaging geodesy: Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, v. 112, no. 6, p. 2646-2957, https://doi.org/10.1785/0120220072.

ISSN: 1943-3573 (online)

Publication type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Title The Geodetic Centroid (gCent) Catalog: Global earthquake monitoring with satellite imaging geodesy
Series title Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
DOI 10.1785/0120220072
Volume 112
Issue 6
Publication Date September 15, 2022
Year Published 2022
Language English
Publisher Seismological Society of America
Contributing office(s) Earthquake Hazards Program
Description 12 p.
First page 2646
Last page 2957
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