Abstract
This study analyzed microtremor records from four stations located at the center and vertices of an equilateral triangle with 52-m sides. The stability of the horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratio (HVSR) was estimated for 12 days of continuous records. The results showed no variation in the frequency and amplitude of the peak spectral ratio over time. Although the amplitude patterns varied slightly at each station, the peak frequencies were consistent within the small four-station array. The results suggest that slight variations in subsurface structure beneath the array may have influenced the HVSR amplitudes. The HVSR estimate had little or no dependency of meteorological variations in atmospheric pressure, temperature, wind speed, rainfall, and humidity measured at a meteorological observatory approximately 1.3 km from the array. Spatial autocorrelation (SPAC) analyses indicated that time averaging of continuous micrometer records from a single pair of stations could serve as an alternative to spatial averaging for the entire array. This result implies that, with the SPAC approach, microtremor records from a single pair of stations rather than a larger array can be applied.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aki, K., 1957, Space and time spectra of stationary stochastic waves, with special reference to microtremors. Bulletin of the Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo, 35, 415–457.
Bonnefoy-Claudet, S., Cotton, F., and Bard, P.-Y., 2006, The nature of noise wavefield and its applications for site effects studies: a literature review. Earth-Science Reviews, 79, 205–227.
Capon, J., Greenfield, R.J., and Kolker, R.J., 1967, Multidimensional maximum-likelihood processing of a large-aperture seismic array. In: Proceedings of the IEEE, 192–211.
Cara, F., Di Giulio, G., and Rovelli, A., 2003, A study on seismic noise variations at Colfiorito, central Italy: implications for the use of H/V spectral ratios. Geophysical Research Letters, 30, 1972, doi:10.1029/2003GL017807.
Chávez-García, F.J. and Luzón, F., 2005, On the correlation of seismic microtremors. Journal of Geophysical Research, 110, B11313, doi:10.1029/2005JB003671.
Chávez-García, F.J., Rodríguez, M., and Stephenson, W.R., 2005, An alternative approach to the SPAC analysis of microtremors: exploiting stationarity of noise. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 97, 277–293.
Cho, I., Tada, I., and Shinozaki, Y., 2004, A new method to determine phase velocities of Rayleigh waves from microseisms. Geophysics, 69, 1535–1551.
Chouet, B., De Luca, G., Milana, G., Dawson, P., Martini, M., and Scarpa, R., 1998, Shallow velocity of Stromboli volcano, Italy, derived from small-aperture array measurements of Strombolian tremor. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 88, 653–666.
De Luca, G., Scarpa, R., Del Pezzo, E., and Simini, M., 1997, Shallow structure of Mt. Vesuvius volcano, Italy, from seismic array analysis. Geophysical Research Letters, 24, 481–484.
Ferrazzini, V., Aki, K., and Chouet, B., 1991, Characteristics of seismic waves composing Hawaiian volcanic tremor and gas-piston events observed by a near-source array. Journal of Geophysical Research, 96, 6199–6209.
Field, E.H., Clement, A.C., Jacob, K.H., Aharonian, V., Hough, S.E., Friberg, P.A., Babaian, T.O., Karapetian, S.S., Hovanessian, S.M., and Abramian, H.A., 1995, Earthquake site-response study in Giumri (formerly Lenikan) Armenia, using ambient noise observations. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 85, 349–353.
Friedrich, A., Krüger, F., and Kingle, K., 1998, Ocean-generated microseismic noise located with the Grafenberg array. Journal of Seismology, 2, 47–64.
Hasselmann, K., 1963, Statistical analysis of the generation of microseisms. Review of Geophysics, 1, 177–210.
Kang, T.-S. and Shin, J.S., 2006, Surface-wave tomography from ambient seismic noise of accelerograph networks in southern Korea. Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L17303, doi:10.1029/2006GL027044.
Konno, K. and Ohmachi, T., 1998, Ground-motion characteristics estimated from spectral ratio between horizontal and vertical components of microtremors. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 88, 228–241.
Köhler, A., Ohrnberger, M., Scherbaum, F., Wathelet, M., and Cornou, C., 2007, Assessing the reliability of the modified three-component spatial autocorrelation technique. Geophysical Journal International, 168, 779–796.
Lachet, C., Hatzfeld, D., Bard, P.-Y., Theodulidis, N., Papaioannou, C., and Savvaidis, A., 1996, Site effects and microzonation in the City of Thessaloniki (Greece): comaprison of different approaches. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 86, 1692–1703.
Lermo, J. and Chávez-García, F.J., 1994, Are microtremors useful in site response evaluation? Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 84, 1350–1364.
Longuet-Higgins, M. D., 1950, A theory on the origin of microseisms. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A, 243, 1–35.
Mucciarelli, M., Gallipoli, M.R., Di Giacomo, D., Di Nota, F., and Nino E., 2005, The influence of wind on measurements of seismic noise. Geophysical Journal International, 161, 303–308.
Okada, H., 2003, The microtremor survey method. Geophysical Monograph Series, Society of Exploration Geophysicists, 12.
Sabra, K.G., Gerstoft, P., Roux, P., Kuperman, W.A., and Fehler, M.C., 2005, Surface wave tomography from microseisms in southern California. Geophysical Research Letters, 32, L14311, doi:10.1029/2005GL023155.
Sánchez-Sesma, F.J. and Campillo, M., 2006, Retrieval of the Green’s function from cross correlation: the canonical elastic problem. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 96, 1182–1191.
Satoh, T., Kawase, H., and Matsushima, S., 2001, Differences between site characteristics obtained from microtremors, S-waves, Pwaves, and codas. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 91, 313–334.
Shapiro, N.M., Campillo, M., Stehly, L., and Ritzwoller, M.H., 2005, High-resolution surface-wave tomography from ambient seismic noise. Science, 307, 1615–1618.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kang, TS., Shin, J.S. Stability and correlation properties of microtremor response. Geosci J 15, 95–103 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12303-011-0002-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12303-011-0002-3