Pre-Existing Structures Control the Orientation of Strike-Slip Faulting During the 2021 Dike Intrusion at Fagradalsfjall, Iceland

Abstract

The 2021 Fagradalsfjall inflation and dike intrusion marked the initiation of a new era of volcanism on Iceland's Reykjanes Peninsula. We present a large automatic catalog consisting of more than 80,000 earthquake hypocenters spanning the full period of the dike intrusion, which were derived from seismic data recorded by a dense network of seismometers. The 9–10 km long dike exhibits a two-segment geometry of similar lengths. Linear regression on a relatively relocated subset of over 12,000 earthquakes revealed a strike of 029° with a standard deviation of 2° in the southern segment, and 046° with a standard deviation of 1° in the northern segment of the dike. A total of 97 detailed fault plane solutions from selected subsets of events provide new insight into the controls on faulting, showing almost exclusively right-lateral strike-slip/oblique-slip faulting associated with the dike intrusion, and a lack of left-lateral strike-slip fault motion. The alignment of fault planes is consistent with the orientation of pre-existing structures, within uncertainty estimates. In light of these observations, we conclude that the dominant controlling factor on the orientation of dike-related faulting is the extensive network of pre-existing structures formed by the active transtensional plate boundary along the Reykjanes Peninsula.