Moment tensors of ten witwatersrand mine tremors

Ground motions, recorded both underground and on the surface in two of the South African Gold mining districts, were inverted to determine complete moment tensors for 10 mining-induced tremors in the magnitude range 1.9 to 3.3. The resulting moment tensors fall into two separate categories. Seven of the events involve substantial coseismic volumetric reduction-ΔV together with normal faulting entailing shear deformation ΣAD, where the summation is over fault planes of areaA and average slipD. For these events the ratio-ΔV/ΣAD ranges from 0.58 to 0.92, with an average value of 0.71. For the remaining three events ΔV is not significantly different from zero; these events are largely double-couple sources involving normal faulting. Surprisingly, the two types of source mechanism appear to be very distinct in that there is not a continuous distribution of the source mix from ΔV=0 to-ΔV≈ΣAD. Presumably, the coseismic closure indicates substantial interaction between a mine stope and adjacent shear failure in the surrounding rock, under the influence of an ambient stress for which the maximum principal stress is oriented vertically.

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