Top > Visiting researchers > Chen XIAOWEI

Chen Xiaowei

Self Introduction

My main research topics during PhD study are focused on earthquake triggering processes and seismicity clustering. We model the spatial migration behavior of "burst-like" sequences and found that earthquake swarms usually exhibit statistically significant spatial migration behavior, while aftershock sequences generally lack spatial migration. The spatial-temporal evolution of the seismicity reflects the evolution of the underlying physical triggering processes, including both slow-slip and fluid processes. We find fluid signal across southern California. Different seismicity patterns are apparently associated with tectonic factors: for example, a higher fraction of normal faulting earthquakes are accompanied with foreshocks and swarm sequences, however, most reverse faulting earthquakes are mainshock-aftershock sequences and lack foreshocks.

We are also interested in understanding if there are any differences among source processes. We compare stress drop and source spectra, and find that earthquakes before the largest event in the sequence tend to have lower stress drop and lower high-frequency energy compared with corresponding aftershocks. We are interested to analyze more sequences to identify temporal variation in the spectral components. For my stay in ERI, I will work with Prof. Aitaro Kato to analyze seismicity in Japan.

I am interested in understanding if we can identify similar clustering pattern in Japan and similar dependence on tectonic factors.