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Depth-Dependent Shear-Wave Attenuation in Central Apennines, Italy

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Abstract

We used 1029 earthquakes, with magnitudes ranging from M 3.0 to M 6.5, located in central Apennines, Italy, and recorded by 414 local stations to study the variation of the quality factor QS of shear waves with depth. We first determined average nonparametric attenuation functions in the frequency band from 0.5 to 20 Hz and hypocenter distances less than 155 km to correct the observed acceleration spectra for attenuation effects. Then, we separated source and site effects from the corrected spectral records to determine the changes of QS with depth. We used a 1D local shear-wave velocity model to calculate the travel times of the source-station paths, and we inverted the observed spectra to determine QS in three different depth intervals (0–4 km, 4–10 km and 10–15 km) and five frequencies (0.5, 1, 4, 10 and 20 Hz). We found that QS increases with frequency at all depths considered and tends to have lower values at shallow depths. The average value of QS is consistent with previous studies made in central Italy and can be approximated by QS = 43f0.94. To describe the frequency dependence of QS with depth (H), we determine the following relations: QS = 5.5f1.39, 0.5 ≤ f ≤ 10 Hz and QS = 151.5, f > 10 Hz for 0–4 km, QS = 52f0.87 for 4 < H < 10 km and QS = 51f0.92 for 10 ≤ H ≤ 15 km. We conclude that the Q-depth-dependent model can be useful to improve estimates of source parameters and ground motion prediction in the central Apennines region of Italy.

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Fig. 1

source-station paths

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source-station attenuation (Eq. (4)). We selected an M 4.3 earthquake (event 252) with focal depth of 9.8 km which was recorded by 148 stations. The right fame shows the residual between the average NAF and the attenuation along the respective source-station path versus azimuth

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Acknowledgements

This project was partially funded by the Mexican Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) project FONCICYT-CONACYT 1000/780/2016 and CONACYT Grant CB2017-2018-A1-S-37179. We thank the technical support provided by Antonio Mendoza Camberos and Arturo Pérez Vertti. We very much appreciate the careful review of the original manuscript made by Peter Klin and the anonymous reviewer. The reviewer’s comments and suggestions enriched our manuscript considerably. We also thank the Associate Editor Dr. Fabio Romanelli.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. División Ciencias de la Tierra, Departamento de Sismología, Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada (CICESE), 22860, Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico

    Raúl R. Castro

  2. Istituto Nazionale di Geofísica e Vulcanologia, Sezione di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Francesca Pacor

  3. Universita degli Studi di Genova, DISTAV, Genova, Italy

    Daniele Spallarossa

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  1. Raúl R. Castro
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  3. Daniele Spallarossa
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Correspondence to Raúl R. Castro.

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Castro, R.R., Pacor, F. & Spallarossa, D. Depth-Dependent Shear-Wave Attenuation in Central Apennines, Italy. Pure Appl. Geophys. 178, 2059–2075 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-021-02744-9

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