UNBIASED MOMENT-RATE SPECTRA AND ABSOLUTE SITE EFFECTS IN THE KACHCHH BASIN, INDIA, FROM THE ANALYSIS OF THE AFTERSHOCKS OF THE 2001 Mw 7.6 BHUJ EARTHQUAKE
What can be learned about absolute site effects on ground motions and about earthquake source spectra from recordings at temporary seismic stations, none of which could be considered a 'reference' (hard rock) site, for which no geotechnical information is available, in a very poorly instrumented region? This challenge motivated our current study of aftershocks of the 2001 Mw 7.6 Bhuj earthquake, in Western India. Crustal attenuation and spreading relationships based on the same data used here were determined in an earlier study. In this paper we decouple the ambiguity between absolute source radiation and site effects by first computing robust estimates of moment-rate spectra of about 200 aftershocks in each of two depth ranges. Using these new estimates of sourcespectra, and our understanding of regional wave propagation, we extract the absolute site terms of the sites of the temporary deployment. Absolute site terms (one for each component of the ground motion, for each station) are computed in an average sense, via an L{sub 1}-norm minimization, and results for each site are averaged over wide ranges of azimuths and takeoff angles. The Bhuj deployment is characterized by a variable shallow geology, mostly of soft sedimentary units. Vertical site terms in the region were observed to be almost featureless and slightly < 1.0 within wide frequency ranges. As a result, H/V spectral ratios mimic the absolute behaviors of absolute horizontal site terms, and they generally overpredict them. On the contrary, with respect to the results for sedimentary rock sites (limestone, dolomite) obtained by Malagnini et al. (2004), H/V spectral ratios in their study did not have much in common with absolute horizontal site terms. Spectral ratios between the vector sum of the computed horizontal site terms for the temporary deployment with respect to the same quantity computed at the hardest rock station available, BAC1, are seriously biased by its non-flat, non-unitary site response. This indicates that often the actual behavior of a rock outcrop is far from that of an ideal, reference site.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 950081
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-JRNL-211990; BSSAAP; TRN: US0901961
- Journal Information:
- Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, Vol. 96; ISSN 0037-1106
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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