The 13th SEGJ International Symposium, 2018
Shallow seismic reflection survey results of Mogod fault, central Mongolia
Nomin-Erdene E(1), Batsaikhan Ts(1),Tseedulam Kh(2), Battuvshin G(1)
(1)
Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics, Mongolian Academy of Sciences(nomin5556@gmail.com), (2) Mongolian
University of Science and Technology
ABSTRACT
The Mogod (Mw=7.0) earthquake on 5 January, 1967
is the largest recent event in Mogod region and was
located at about ~260 km from Ulaanbaatar, near the
north east edge of the Khangai uplift. The study area,
Mogod belongs to one of the seismic active region and
seismic hazard regions, that is located in near
Ulaanbaatar city. The damage distribution in the near-
source area is also significantly affected by fault
geometry and rupture history. Therefore determining
active fault substructure is one of important issue of
Mongolian seismologist. The objective of this research
is to determine substructures of earthquake active fault
by using Summit Compact II which is the seismic
instrument for near surface structural mapping. We
carried out three profiles with 150 m lengths by using
Common Depth Point method of reflection seismic.
We shot at every 4 meters along the profile by using
mechanic iron hammer for high resolution. For data
processing, we used RadExPro program for band pass
filtering with 5-80Hz, predictive deconvolution with
2000-4000ns, NMO, and migration with 1500m/s, in
order to improve signal to noise ratio and getting better
results. The study result shows that this paleoseimic
fault has long-period characteristics of the
displacement associated with earthquake. The seismic
profile across Mogod fault shows high angle fault that
extends upward into quaternary sediments, and depth
varies between 5 and 60 m. After getting results from
seismic survey, we integrated near surface structures
with trench wall photomosaic.
KEY WORDS: Seismic reflection survey, Mogod
fault, geophysics, seismic processing
INTRODUCTION
The seismic activity in Mongolia is related to its
location between the compressive structures associated
with the collision of the Indian-Australian plate with
the Eurasian plate on the one hand and the extensional
structure associated with the Baykal rift system on the
other. Last century four major earthquakes(Ms>8) and
several moderate earthquakes(Ms 5.3-7.5) were
occurred in Mongolia. One of major earthquake in
Mongolia is Mogod earthquake of 1967 which is
named after place it occurred. It was the most powerful
earthquake that occurred in central part of Mongolia.
Mogod is a sum of Bulgan Province in northern
Mongolia, as shown in “Figure 1”. Population is 2654
and it is famous for its hot spring and nature. The sum
is located about 131 km from center of Bulgan
province and 340 km from Ulaanbaatar city. On 5
January, 1967 strong earthquake was occurred 50 km
from this sum and destroyed buildings. Its tremor was
felt by citizens of Ulaanbaatar city due to its near
location to city.
Extremely thin distribution of population of Mongolia
has contributed low impact from seismic activities of
past. However, half of Mongolian population lives in
Ulaanbaatar city and because of its shared importance
as the political, economical, cultural and population
centre of the nation. Ulaanbaatar city could face
considerable earthquake risk. The recent minor tremors
experienced by Ulaanbaatar city raised public concern
of earthquake safety. Therefore it is important to study
possible active faults that could pose a threat to
settlements and infrastructures.
After the Mogod earthquake on January 5,
1967, the most powerful earthquake in central
Mongolia with a magnitude of 7.8 and an intensity at
epicenter of I0=10 (Zemletryaseniy, 1985; Rogozhin et
al., 2008), seismic risk zoning and microzoning of
Ulaanbaatar (Seismicheskoe, 1971) was carried out. In
the course of this study it was established that the
capital of Mongolia is located on the boundary of
seven (west of the city) and six (east of the city) zones
of seismic tremors on the MSK64 scale.
Mogod earthquake (Ms 7.5, Mw 7.0) in Mongolia
produced spectacular surface faulting and has been the
subject of several previous seismological and field
reports. The main shock ruptured in three subevents
occurring sequentially from north to south, all of them
associated with segments of coseismic surface faulting.
The first and second subevents involved predominantly
N–S right-lateral strike slip, with the second, larger one
occurring on a fault dipping steeply east with a
significant reverse component of slip. The third
subevent involved thrust faulting with a NW–SE strike
at the southern end of the strike-slip faulting. A large
(Mw6.4) aftershock on January 20 was associated with
a different thrust fault segment, which terminates the
southern end of the strike-slip rupture in the first
subevent (Bayasgalan A. and Jackson J.A.,1999). Total
 The 13th SEGJ International Symposium, 2018

surface rupture of Mogod earthquakes is about ~45 km
long fault. This active fault generates large numbers of
small earthquakes. The most recent significant
earthquake on this fault occurred in January 2016 with
Ml=4. Therefore it is high seismic potential zone that
could impact the capital city of Mongolia.
In summer of 2017 the complex geophysical study
was carried out on three sites on Mogod fault in frame
work of 60 year anniversary of Mogod earthquake and
the Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics(eg. Figure
2). Trenches were dug and opened in July 2017 during
Mogod field conference.

Figure 1. Seismicity map of Mongolia(M.Adjia et al., 2008). Seismictiy of Mogod area is marked by blue square.
Mongolian seismic network stations are marked on bottom right corner of map. Focal mechanisms of strong earthquake
are marked on bottom left corner of map.

Figure 2. Survey sites. 3 trenches were dug and opened in frame work of 60 year anniversary of Mogod earthquake-
Mogod field trip.
 The 13th SEGJ International Symposium, 2018
REGIONAL GEOLOGY
The structural configuration of the Mogod fault is
volcanics of the Orkhon-Selenga trough to poorly
consolidated gravels, sands, silts, and clays, weakly
lithified sedimentary rocks. The sediments and
sedimentary rocks filling the Paleozoic bedrock trough
range in age from Upper Permian to Quaternary(eg.
Figure 3).
Figure 3. Schematic map of the Mogod earthquake
area (Rogozhin E.A., Balzhinnyam I. , 1971 ): (1, 2)
Upper Permian (1) and Upper Triassic–Lower Jurassic
(2) volcanics of the Orkhon-Selenga trough; (3) strikes
and dips (shown by hachures) of beds; (4) axes of
Holocene uplifts (5, Khalzan-Khamar Ridge; 6,
Nomtony Nuru Ridge; 7, Sarkhanagyn-bel uplift; 8,
Tulet Ridge); (5) Holocene basins (1, Khuljiin-Gol; 2,
Asagt; 3, Urtyngol; 4, Shiriin); (6) geological fault; (7–
10) coseismic ruptures of the 1967 earthquake: (7) en
echelon systems of fissures and ramparts, (8) major
seismic ruptures (the hachures show the dip of the fault
plane, the arrow with a number shows the sense of a
lateral slip and its amplitude (in m), and the number at
the footwall of a fault is the vertical reverse amplitude
(in m), (9, 10) additional and branching ruptures: (9)
normal and normal–lateral faults and (10) large and
small gaping (tensile) fissures; (11) trench; (12)
research site of detailed inspection of a rupture. The
star in the inset is the epicenter of the Mogod 1967
earthquake.
INSTRUMENTS
The seismic sounding was performed throughout 48
channels “Summit II Compact”. The Summit II
Compact is the seismic acquisition system for shallow
low seismic velocity measurements, borehole
tomography, and VSP surveys: The twenty-four
channel box in a solid metal casing with the SUMMIT
„Plug & Trace‟ technology can be used in any
environment for high speed production. The
seismograph works as a stand alone system or several
boxes can be linked together with the „Snap-on‟ line
cable to comprise a multi-channel seismic acquisition
system.
We used PEG40 mechanical hammer which is
mounted on the truck for energy source and 4.5 Hz
geophones for receiver(eg. Figure 4) .
Figure 4. Summit II Compact and PEG40-energy
source.
METHOD AND PROCESSING
The seismic survey was carried out in July 2017 at
three sites on Mogod fault (eg. Figure 2).The energy
source was PEG40 (truck mounted with accelerated
weight drop-iron hammer). We shot at every 4 meters
along the profile. Trigger on the iron plate recorded
every shots (eg. Figure 4). The receivers (4.5 Hz
geophones) were placed with 2 m spacing along
profile. Total length of profiles was 150 m.
The reflection profile cross-cuts the active fault at site
2 and 3. Total number of shots were about 136 at each
site. Each shot stacked by 15 times during
measurements in order to reduce noise . A large
stacking number was used to accurately detect the
reflected signals with a high S/N ratio in areas with
complicated structures.
 The 13th SEGJ International Symposium, 2018
All the data were processed using techniques employed
in conventional reflection surveys. The process
flowchart is shown in “Figure 5”. Generally, in data
processing in seismic exploration, the procedures
adopted for imaging a subsurface structure depend on
the target depth. The data-processing parameters must
be appropriately set in order to obtain accurate imaging
of the subsurface at various target depths. In this study,
we analyzed the reflected signals from the shallow
parts of the target area due to survey length which was
designed to accommodate technical possibilities. The
travel-time limit corresponds to a maximum target
depth of approximately 50 m (eg. Figure 6). In this
survey, we process the data obtained from the shallow
section and study shallow depth structure of fault. We
used band pass filtering with 5-80Hz and 8-50 Hz,
predictive deconvolution with 2000-4000 ns , NMO,
and migration with 1500m/s, in order to improve signal
to noise ratio and getting better results.
Field Data
Geometry set
Static correction, Refraction analysis
CMP sorting
Band-pass filtering Deconvolution
NMO, Velocity analysis
Stacking, Migration
Figure 5. Flow chart of data processing.
CMP
Time(ms)
Figure 6. Travel time section along trench 1 with
trench wall photomosaic. The trench 1 location is
shown in Figure 2.
RESULT AND DISCUSSION
We carried out a seismic reflection survey in the
Mogod fault using Summit II Compact, and obtained
several interesting results from the processed depth
sections. These results are summarized as follows:
(1) The upper limit for observing reflection was
controlled mainly by the interference between
the ground roll and the reflection event for
the shortest offsets.
(2) Strong reflectors occur at 100 ms. This could
be related to the material from fault zones.
(3) After 500 ms reflections, refractions couldn‟t
identified. Reason for that is profile length
was insufficient.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We wish to thank all the staff of the Institute of
Astronomy and Geophysics, who helped in carrying
out this survey. We are grateful to the anonymous
reviewers for their insightful and critical discussion
of this paper.
REFERENCES
A. Bayasgalan ; J.A. Jackson, A re-assessment of the
faulting in the 1967 Mogod earthquakes in
Mongolia, International Geophysical Journal,
Volume: 138, Issue: 3, Sept. 1999
E. A. Rogozhin, V. S. Imaev, O. P. Smekalin, and D. P.
Schwartz., Tectonic Position and Geological
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