On the origin of upper crustal shear-wave anisotropy at Samos Island, Greece

Shear-wave splitting is associated to different sources in the upper crust. Preferentially oriented minerals, stress-aligned microcracks and tectonic structures have all been identified as causes of seismic anisotropy in the upper crust. However, distinguishing between them and discovering the actual origin of the splitting effect has important implications; changes in the anisotropic properties of the medium related to the behavior of fluid-filled microcracks could have potential connections to the occurrence of an impending significant earthquake. The recent 2020 Samos Mw = 6.9 event and its associated sequence was a great opportunity to study shear-wave splitting in the area. The spatial constrains in such studies, i.e., the requirement of events located very close to the receivers, did not permit exploring local anisotropy in the past, due to a severe lack of suitable data. To establish a background of splitting, we searched for any appropriate earthquake in a five-year period preceding the mainshock. We performed an automatic analysis on over 200 event-station pairs and obtained 164 high-quality splitting observations between January 2015 and November 2020. Results indicated a strong connection to local structures; Sfast polarization axes seem to align with faults in the area. However, we also observed a period of increasing and decreasing time-delays, associated with an Mw = 6.3 earthquake that occurred on June 2017 near Lesvos Island. The latter behavior implies the possibility of stress-induced anisotropy in the area. Thus, the Samos Island could be represented by two different sources of splitting; structures to the NW and microcracks to the SE.