3-D velocity structure in southern Haiti from local earthquake tomography

We investigate 3-D local earthquake tomography for high-quality travel time arrivals from aftershocks following the 2010 M7.0 Haiti earthquake on the Leogane fault. The data were recorded by 35 stations, including 19 ocean bottom seismometers, from which we selected 595 events to simultaneously invert for hypocenter location and 3-D V-p and V-s velocity structures in southern Haiti. We performed several resolution tests and concluded that clear features can be recovered to a depth of 15 km. At 5 km depth we distinguish a broad low-velocity zone in the V-p and V-s structure offshore near Gonave Island, which correlate with layers of marine sediments. Results show a pronounced low-velocity zone in the upper 5 km across the city of Leogane, which is consistent with the sedimentary basin location from geologic map. At 10 km depth, we detect a low-velocity anomaly offshore near the Trois Baies fault and a NW-SE directed low-velocity zone onshore across Petit-Goave and Jacmel, which is consistent with a suspected fault from a previous study and that we refer to it in our study as the Petit-Goave-Jacmel fault. These observations suggest that low-velocity structures delineate fault structures and the sedimentary basins across the southern peninsula, which is extremely useful for seismic hazard assessment in Haiti.