The Kakuto caldera is located in the northern part of Kirisima Volcanoes. The Ebino earthquake swarm in 1968 and other two earthquake swarms in 1913-1915 and 1961 respectively were recorded in the caldera. The microseismic activity in the Kakuto caldera is discussed in this paper using the seismological data of Kirisima Volcano Observatory (KVO), a branch station of Earthquake Research Institute. The relation between the seismic activities in the Kakuto caldera and the Ebino plateau is also studied.
The location of earthquakes which are recorded during the period of September 1971 to February 1972 and which have magnitude larger than about -0.5 were determined and the seismic activities from 1964 to 1971 in the both area were discussed.
The summary of the results is as follows:
1) The earthquakes under the temporal stationary state activity are located in all over the caldera. Particularly even in stationary state the activities are more dense in the area where the Ebino earthquake swarm occurred in 1968 as compared to the outside.
2) One micro or ultramicro earthquake of magnitude 1 at largest occurred in every two or three days, as the activities in the stationary state. In addition to the activities, the small anomarous activities, such as a mainshock-aftershocks type and a small earthquake swarm type were recorded. It was only few times in a year that such anomarous activities were recorded.
3) There seems to be an inverse correlation between the seismic activities of the Kakuto caldera and the Ebion plateau, the south part of the Kakuto caldera.
4) A process which will explain the above inverse relation is as follows:
i) The accumlation of the strain in and around the Kirisima Volcanoes starts.
ii) Destructions of the crust in the structuary weak domain (the Ebino plateau) start and progress (KVO was opened in 1964. The destructions already started at that time).
iii) The destructions in the less weak domain (the Kakuto caldera; Novemver 1967) start and the destructions in the weak domain end.
iv) The destructions in the less weak domain progress (the Ebino earthquake swarm occured on February 1968).
v) The destructions in the less weak domain and the strain release end (around 1970).
5) In order to confirm the above process, a series of earthquake swarms was recorded. Two swarm occurred in the Ebino plateau on April 1966 and near Mt. Kurino-dake, the west side of the Ebino plateau on March 1967. The energy release of the swarms is about 1×10
14 erg. One year after the second swarm, the Ebino earthquake swarm occurred in the Kakuto caldera on February 1968. The total energy release of the Ebino earthquake is 1.6×10
21 erg.
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