Accurate source location from P waves scattered by surface topography

Abstract:

Accurate source locations of earthquakes and other seismic events are fundamental in seismology. The location accuracy is limited by several factors, including velocity models, which are often poorly known. In contrast, surface topography, the largest velocity contrast in the Earth, is often precisely mapped at the seismic wavelength (> 100 m). In this study, we explore the use of P-coda waves generated by scattering at surface topography to obtain high-resolution locations of near-surface seismic events. The Pacific Northwest region is chosen as an example. The grid search method is combined with the 3D strain Green's tensor database type method to improve the search efficiency as well as the quality of hypocenter solution. The strain Green's tensor is calculated by the 3D collocated-grid finite difference method on curvilinear grids. Solutions in the search volume are then obtained based on the least-square misfit between the 'observed' and predicted P and P-coda waves. A 95% confidence interval of the solution is also provided as a posterior error estimation. We find that the scattered waves are mainly due to topography in comparison with random velocity heterogeneity characterized by the von Kάrmάn-type power spectral density function. When only P wave data is used, the 'best' solution is offset from the real source location mostly in the vertical direction. The incorporation of P coda significantly improves solution accuracy and reduces its uncertainty. The solution remains robust with a range of random noises in data, un-modeled random velocity heterogeneities, and uncertainties in moment tensors that we tested.