S43B-4542:
Body-wave Attenuation in the South-Central Region of the Gulf of California, México
Thursday, 18 December 2014
Raul Ramon Castro1,2, Claudia A Vidales-Basurto2, Carlos I Huerta3, Danielle F Sumy4, James B Gaherty5 and John A Collins6, (1)CICESE Seismology, San Diego, CA, United States, (2)CICESE, Sismologia, Ensenada, Mexico, (3)University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, Civil Engineering and Surveying, Mayaguez, PR, United States, (4)University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (5)Columbia University in the City of New York, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, NY, United States, (6)WHOI, Woods Hole, MA, United States
Abstract:
We present results from a recent study of seismic attenuation of body waves in the south-central region of the Gulf of California (GoC) obtained using records from the Network of Autonomously Recording Seismographs of Baja California (NARS-Baja), from the CICESE's Broadband Seismological Network of the GoC (RESBAN), and from the Ocean Bottom Seismographs (OBS) deployed as part of the Sea of Cortez Ocean Bottom Array experiment (SCOOBA). We examine 27 well-located earthquakes that occurred from October 2005 to October 2006 with magnitudes (Mw) between 3.5 and 4.8. We estimated S-wave site effects by calculating horizontal to vertical spectral ratios and determined attenuation functions with a nonparametric model by inverting the observed spectral amplitudes of 21 frequencies between 0.13 and 12.59 Hz for the SCOOBA (OBS) stations and 19 frequencies between 0.16 and 7.94 Hz for NARS-Baja and RESBAN stations. We calculated the geometrical spreading and the attenuation (1/Q) factors for two distance intervals (10-120 km and 120-220 km, respectively) for each frequency considered. The estimates of Q obtained with the SCOOBA (OBS) records for the interval 10-120 km indicate that the P waves attenuate more than S waves (QP=34 f 0.82, QS=59 f 0.90) for frequencies between 0.6 and 12.6 Hz; while for the 120-220 km interval, where ray-paths travel deeper, S waves attenuate more than P waves (QP=117 f 0.44, QS=51 f 1.12). The estimates of Q obtained using NARS-Baja and RESBAN records, within 10-120 km, indicate that P waves attenuate more than S waves (QP=69 f 0.87, QS=176 f 0.61) at frequencies between 0.3 and 6.3 Hz; while at the 120-220 km distance interval S waves attenuate slightly more than P waves (QP=39 f 0.64, QS=48 f 0.37) at high frequencies (f > 3 Hz). These results, based on a unique OBS dataset, provide an indirect mean to constrain future models of the thermal structure beneth the GoC.
