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western quebec and southern ontario - Department of Geology

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Previous studies have suggested that earthquakes along the south<strong>western</strong> margin<strong>of</strong> the WQSZ zone demonstrate a reverse-sense reactivation <strong>of</strong> Paleozoic normal faultswithin the Ottawa-Bonnechere Graben (e.g., Kay, 1942; Adams <strong>and</strong> Basham, 1991; Bentet al. 2002). However, most earthquakes in the north-eastern part <strong>of</strong> the WQSZ have notshown any spatial relationships with the surface features <strong>of</strong> Grenvillian shear zones orany other rift-related faults (Forsyth, 1981; Adams <strong>and</strong> Basham, 1991). Previous authorshave proposed hypotheses relating pre-existing tectonic structures, includingMesoproterozoic shear zones associated with the Grenville orogeny (Forsyth, 1981) <strong>and</strong>late Precambrian <strong>and</strong> early Palaeozoic normal faults associated with the Ottawa-Bonnechere Graben (Adams <strong>and</strong> Basham, 1991; Bent et al., 2002), to earthquakelocations. However, the nature <strong>of</strong> seismicity in the WQSZ is not well understood mainlydue to the lack <strong>of</strong> realistic models relating the earthquakes within the region to the mainseismogenic structures <strong>of</strong> the WQSZ. One <strong>of</strong> the reasons for this is probably the largeerror in the routinely calculated epicentres (~ 0.03° average error for the latitude <strong>and</strong>longitude <strong>and</strong> a default depth <strong>of</strong> 18 km for most <strong>of</strong> the earthquakes in the GSC catalog).Some events in this zone have more accurate hypocentre locations but they do not coverthe whole area nor long period <strong>of</strong> time.2.3.2 The Charlevoix Seismic zone (CSZ)The Charlevoix region, located in <strong>southern</strong> Quebec along the St. Lawrence River 150 kmNE <strong>of</strong> Quebec City, is historically the most active earthquake zone in eastern Canada (e.g.Buchbinder et al. 1988) (Figure 2.3). This region has been monitored by a microseismicarray since 1977, yielding accurate locations <strong>of</strong> earthquake hypocentres. Large historical17

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