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Joint Inversion for Earthquake Depths Using Local Waveforms and Amplitude Spectra of Rayleigh Waves

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Abstract

Reliable earthquake depth is fundamental to many seismological problems. In this paper, we present a method to jointly invert for centroid depths with local (distance < 5°) seismic waveforms and regional (distance of 5°–15°) Rayleigh wave amplitude spectra on sparse networks. We use earthquake focal mechanisms and magnitudes retrieved with the Cut-and-Paste (CAP) method to compute synthetic amplitude spectra of fundamental mode Rayleigh wave for a range of depths. Then we grid search to find the optimal depth that minimizes the joint misfit of amplitude spectra and local waveforms. As case studies, we apply this method to the 2008 Wells, Nevada Mw6.0 earthquake and a Mw5.6 outer-rise earthquake to the east of Japan Trench in 2013. Uncertainties estimated with a bootstrap re-sampling approach show that this joint inversion approach constrains centroid depths well, which are also verified by independent teleseismic depth-phase data.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Robert Herrmann and Charles Ammon for sharing their CPS (Computer Programs in Seismology) package; and Lupei Zhu for sharing his FK and CAP codes. We thank the reviewers and editor for their positive and constructive comments and suggestions. All figures are plotted with help of Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) code (Wessel and Smith 1998). Data used in this study were downloaded from the IRIS data management center and National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED) earthquake and volcano data center. Seismic networks used in this work are listed in Table 3. The study is supported by China MOST 973 program (2014CB845901) and NSFC (No. 41461164003).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Geophysical Observatory at Mengcheng, School of Earth and Space Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Zhe Jia

  2. State Key Laboratory of Geodesy and Earth’s Dynamics, Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430077, China

    Sidao Ni & Risheng Chu

  3. Seismological Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, 91125, USA

    Zhongwen Zhan

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  1. Zhe Jia
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  2. Sidao Ni
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Correspondence to Sidao Ni.

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Jia, Z., Ni, S., Chu, R. et al. Joint Inversion for Earthquake Depths Using Local Waveforms and Amplitude Spectra of Rayleigh Waves. Pure Appl. Geophys. 174, 261–277 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-016-1373-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-016-1373-1

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