Micro-earthquake activities induced by a “ghost” plume in Eastern Oman

Key Points

• This research investigates the effects of the Dani mantle plume on the lithosphere's deformation in Eastern Oman.
• Deployed 107 broadband seismometers in Oman-UAE to record continuous three-component waveforms.
• Applied PhaseNet deep learning to detect numerous micro-earthquake arrival times from waveforms.
• Utilized a Gaussian mixture model-based GaMMa program for event association.
• Conducted location inversion of the associated arrival times using NonLinLoc to identify micro-earthquake events.
• Re-located the earthquakes using GrowClust to enhance event quality.
• Identified 724 micro-earthquake events, refining to 281 high-quality events after processing.
• Discovered two distinct seismic clusters: one near the Musandam Peninsula associated with tectonic activity, and another related to the uplift of the Dani mantle plume beneath the crust.
• Revealed that despite the ghost plume's lack of surface volcanic activity, it still induces significant lithospheric deformation leading to intraplate micro-earthquakes.