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Ground motion amplification atop the complex sedimentary basin of Haifa Bay (Israel)

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Abstract

The Zevulun Valley (ZV) is a sedimentary basin underlying the heavily populated and industrialized petrochemical hub of Haifa Bay, Israel. With active tectonic faults at close range and a mixture of large population and vulnerable facilities, the seismic risk in the ZV is high. However, until now the national seismic network in Israel only included rock stations with no measurements supporting the expected difference between the ZV and its surroundings. Moreover, a detailed analysis of ground motions atop sedimentary basins using earthquakes data was never conducted in Israel for any basin. In this paper, we present a dataset collected during a 16 months monitoring campaign with a transportable network deployed in the ZV. For the first time in Israel we simultaneously recorded earthquake (3.1 < Mw < 5.5) ground motions at basin- and reference-sites. Spectral ratios reveal amplification factors tangibly higher than those previously reported by horizontal-to-vertical-spectral-ratio (HVSR) techniques and 2-D modeling. In particular, the deeper parts of the valley exhibit ground motion amplification up to a factor of 8 at frequencies lower than 1 Hz. Comparison of the measured spectral ratios with the results of 1-D linear-elastic analysis shows partial correlation reflecting the complexity of the sub-surface structure.

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Acknowledgements

The portable seismic network used to collect the data for this study was purchased by the Geological Survey of Israel with funds provided by the Ministry of Energy and Water.

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Author notes

  1. Shahar Shani-Kadmiel

    Present address: Department of Geoscience and Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

  2. Omri Volk

    Present address: Department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel

    Shahar Shani-Kadmiel & Omri Volk

  2. Geological Survey of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel

    Zohar Gvirtzman

  3. Department of Structural Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel

    Michael Tsesarsky

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  1. Shahar Shani-Kadmiel
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Correspondence to Michael Tsesarsky.

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Shani-Kadmiel, S., Volk, O., Gvirtzman, Z. et al. Ground motion amplification atop the complex sedimentary basin of Haifa Bay (Israel). Bull Earthquake Eng 18, 821–836 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-018-00533-9

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