Publications

Depth discrimination using Rg-to-Sg spectral amplitude ratios for seismic events in utah recorded at local distances

Tibi, Rigobert T.; Koper, Keith D.; Pankow, Kristine L.; Young, Christopher J.

Short-period fundamental-mode Rayleigh waves (Rg) are commonly observed on seismograms of anthropogenic seismic events and shallow, naturally occurring tectonic earthquakes (TEs) recorded at local distances. In the Utah region, strong Rg waves traveling with an average group velocity of about 1:8 km=s are observed at ∼1 Hz on waveforms from shallow events (depth < 10 km) recorded at distances up to about 150 km. At these distances, Sg waves, which are direct shear waves traveling in the upper crust, are generally the dominant signals for TEs. In this study, we leverage the well-known notion that Rg amplitude decreases dramatically with increasing event depth to propose a new depth discriminant based on Rg-to-Sg spectral amplitude ratios. The approach is successfully used to discriminate shallow events (both earthquakes and anthropogenic events) from deeper TEs in the Utah region recorded at local distances (< 150 km) by the University of Utah Seismographic Stations (UUSS) regional seismic network. Using Mood’s median test, we obtained probabilities of nearly zero that the median Rg-to-Sg spectral amplitude ratios are the same between shallow events on the one hand (including both shallow TEs and anthropogenic events), and deeper earthquakes on the other, suggesting that there is a statistically significant difference in the estimated Rg-to-Sg ratios between the two populations. We also observed consistent disparities between the different types of shallow events (e.g., mining blasts vs. mining-induced earthquakes), implying that it may be possible to separate the subpopulations that make up this group. This suggests that using local distance Rg-to-Sg spectral amplitude ratios one can not only discriminate shallow events from deeper events but may also be able to discriminate among different populations of shallow events.