Source Mechanism of the 29 May 2017 Mw 6.6 Poso (Sulawesi, Indonesia) Earthquake and Its Seismotectonic Implication

The 29 May 2017 Mw 6.6 Poso earthquake occurred in the eastern part of Central Sulawesi with a normal faulting mechanism, which is the largest normal earthquake to have occurred in the region since instrumental records have been available. Approximately 400 aftershocks were well-recorded by the Indonesian Agency for Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics' (BMKG) broadband seismic network for 1 month after the mainshock. Here, we obtain the source parameters of the Mw 6.6 mainshock by using moment tensor inversion on seismic data that came from 14 stations within a radius of 7° from the mainshock epicenter. It results in the best point-source solution of 103°, 56°, and −100° for the strike, dip, and rake, respectively, and a centroid depth of 6.4 km. The kinematic solution shows a unilateral rupture process with an average slip of ~ 0.5 m on a 20-km rupture length. The source mechanism indicates the extension behavior in the eastern part of Central Sulawesi and the northward mass extrusion process that occurred in the area during the Quaternary. Based on the seismic source parameters and geomorphologic analysis, we propose the Tokorondo Fault as being responsible for the earthquake. A total of 361 aftershock hypocenters are successfully relocated using the double-difference method and indicate three clusters of the off-fault aftershocks. We calculate the Coulomb failure stress (CFS) changes to investigate the occurrence of these aftershocks. The result indicates that the off-fault aftershocks have mostly occurred within the increased CFS change area with a value > 0.1 bar.