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Significant Effects of Shallow Seismic and Stress Properties on Phase Velocities of Rayleigh Waves Up to 20 s

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Abstract

Seismic data are increasingly used to monitor subsurface velocity changes associated with tectonic and environmental processes that occur in different depth sections. To clarify the differences between effects associated with shallow and deep changes of properties, we conduct numerical experiments using simple layered models that include low velocities, low attenuation coefficients and stress-sensitivity of cracked rocks in the shallow crust. We find significant phase-velocity drops in the period range of 5–20 s when large structural changes occur in the top 1–3 km. The apparent velocity changes (δv/v) measured from the first part of the synthetic Rayleigh waves with a cross-correlation based technique show significant velocity drops in the period bands of 5–10 s and 10–20 s that are consistent with reported values of changes at seismogenic depth. The results highlight the importance of accounting for low velocities, attenuation coefficients and stress-sensitivity of parameters in the top 1–3 km in studies aiming to determine the source region of temporal changes. Analyses using different frequency ranges and calculations of apparent delay times over multiple period bands are essential for resolving the depth range of temporal changes of properties. For temporal changes occurring at seismogenic depths, the measured δv/v values at 5–10 s are significantly larger than those of 10–20 s, which are not observed for shallow changes.

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Acknowledgements

All figures are made using the Generic Mapping Tools (www.gmt.soest.hawaii.edu; Wessel et al. 2013). We thank Dr. Anne Obermann and another anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments and suggestions, which significantly improved the quality of this paper. C.Y. and F.N. were supported by NSF (Grant EAR-1251667) and G.L. was funded by NSFc (Grant 41630209). Y.B.Z. acknowledges support by the Wiess visiting professorship program of Rice University and the Department of Energy (award DESC0016520).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Rice University, 6100 Main St, Houston, TX, 77005, USA

    Chenhao Yang, Guoliang Li & Fenglin Niu

  2. State Key Laboratory of Petroleum Resource and Prospecting, and Unconventional Gas Institute, China University of Petroleum at Beijing, Beijing, 102249, China

    Guoliang Li & Fenglin Niu

  3. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90089-0740, USA

    Yehuda Ben-Zion

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  1. Chenhao Yang
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Correspondence to Fenglin Niu.

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Yang, C., Li, G., Niu, F. et al. Significant Effects of Shallow Seismic and Stress Properties on Phase Velocities of Rayleigh Waves Up to 20 s. Pure Appl. Geophys. 176, 1255–1267 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-018-2075-7

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