Contribution of the Seismic Monitoring at the Belgian Princess Elisabeth Base to East Antarctica Ice Sheet Dynamics and Global Seismicity Studies

Owing to the implantation of the “Princess Elisabeth” polar base in East Antarctica, the Royal Observatory of Belgium conducted research in seismology by installing in February 2010 a permanent broadband seismic station on the bedrock near the base. Due to the poor coverage of permanent seismic stations in Antarctica and the small number of them built on the bedrock, the station (code name: ELIB) is an interesting new source of information for global seismicity studies. Since its installation, the station has also recorded numerous local and regional seismic events related to the interaction between the ice sheet flow and the bed­rock. To study this seismicity, we installed five additional temporary broadband seismic stati­ons separated by 25-30 km distance in January 2014. All those stations were operational from January to April 2014, which led to the identification of different spots of ice-related seismicity in a radius of 200 km around ELIB and to the analysis of the processes behind them. As many of the ice-related events located by the temporary broad-band seismic network were recorded by ELIB, it is now possible to identify similar events when only ELIB is working, providing a unique opportunity to follow the evolution of this ice seismicity in some target areas where it would be representative of the ice-sheet dynamic evolution.