A Regional Ground Motion Excitation attenuation Model for the San Francisco Region

• Published in: Geophysical Research Letters
• Main Authors: Malagnini, L., Mayeda, K., Uhrhammer, R., Akinci, A., Herrmann, R. B.
• Other Authors: Malagnini, L.; Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione Roma1, Roma, Italia, Mayeda, K.; Weston Geophysical Corporation, Lexington, MA, Uhrhammer, R.; University of California, Berkeley, CA, Akinci, A.; Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione Roma1, Roma, Italia, Herrmann, R. B.; Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione Roma1, Roma, Italia, Weston Geophysical Corporation, Lexington, MA, University of California, Berkeley, CA, #PLACEHOLDER_PARENT_METADATA_VALUE#
• Format: Manuscript
• Language: English
• Published: 2006
• Subjects: Ground motion; 04. Solid Earth::04.06. Seismology::04.06.04. Ground motion; Brune; Loma; DML
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2122/2306

By using small-to-moderate-sized earthquakes located within ~200 km of San Francisco, we characterize the scaling of the ground motions for frequencies ranging between 0.25 and 20 Hz, obtaining results for geometric spreading, Q(f), and site parameters using the methods of Mayeda et al. (2005) and Malagnini et al. (2004). The results of the analysis show that, throughout the Bay Area, the average regional attenuation of the ground motion can be modeled with a bilinear geometric spreading function with a 30 km crossover distance, coupled to an anelastic function ! exp " #fr $Q( f ) % & ' ( ) * , where: Q(f)=180 f 0.42. A body-wave geometric spreading, g(r)= r -1.0, is used at short hypocentral distances (r < 30 km), whereas g(r)= r -0.6 fits the attenuation of the spectral amplitudes at hypocentral distances beyond the crossover. The frequency-dependent site effects at 12 of the Berkeley Digital Seismic Network (BDSN) stations were evaluated in an absolute sense using coda-derived source spectra. Our results show: i) the absolute site response for frequencies ranging between 0.3 Hz and 2.0 Hz correlate with independent estimates of the local magnitude residuals (dML) for each of the stations; ii) moment-magnitudes (MW) derived from our path and sitecorrected spectra are in excellent agreement with those independently derived using fullwaveform modeling as well as coda-derived source spectra; iii) we use our weak-motionbased relationships to predict motions region wide for the Loma Prieta earthquake, well above the maximum magnitude spanned by our data set, on a completely different set of stations. Results compare well with measurements taken at specific NEHRP site classes; iv) an empirical, magnitude-dependent scaling was necessary for the Brune stress parameter in order to match the large magnitude spectral accelerations and peak ground velocities with our weak-motion-based model. Submitted open