Seismic Attenuation

---from seismic wave travel

times to amplitudes
Haijiang Zhang

Courtesy of many different sources

Haberland et al., GRL 2003

EARTHQUAKE MAGNITUDE

Earliest measure of earthquake

size
Dimensionless number
measured various ways,
including
ML local magnitude
mb body wave magnitude

Ms surface wave magnitude

Mw moment magnitude
Easy to measure
No direct tie to physics of
faulting

Attnuation Mechanisms:
(1) Geometrical spreading: wavefront spreading out while energy per unit
area becomes less.
(2) Multipathing: waves seek alternative paths to the receiver. Some are
dispersed and some are bundled, thereby affecting amplitudes.
(3) Scattering: A way to partition energy of supposedly main arrivals into
boundary or corner diffracted, scattered energy.
Key: very wavelength dependent.
(4) intrinsic attenuation: due to anelasticity
the real earth materials are always lossy, leading to reduced wave
amplitudes, or intrinsic attenuation.
Mechanisms to lose energy:
(1) Movements along mineral dislocations
(2) Shear heating at grain boundaries
These are called internal friction.

Analogous to light behavoirs

Geometric spreading: light moves
outward from lamp in expanding
spherical wave fronts. By conservation
of energy, the energy in a unit area of
the growing wave front decreases as r-2,
where r is the radius of the sphere or
distance from the lamp.

GEOMETRIC SPREADING:
SURFACE WAVES

Expect minimum at =90, and maxima at 0 and 180

From geometric
spreading alone, expect
minimum at =90, and
maxima at 0 and 180
Also have effects of
anelasticity

GEOMETRIC SPREADING: BODY WAVES

For body waves, consider a spherical wavefront moving away from a deep
earthquake. Energy is conserved on the expanding spherical wavefront
whose area is 4 r 2, where r is the radius of the wavefront.
Thus the energy per unit wave front decays as 1 / r2, and the amplitude
decreases as 1 / r

MULTIPATHING

Seismic waves are focused and defocused by variations in velocity.

Effect of Multipathing

Idea of Ray Tubes in body waves

Angle dependent: ray bundle

expands or contracts due to
velocity structure. Also: amplitude
varies with takeoff angle
Ray tube size affects amplitudes,
10
smaller area means larger amplitude

Scattering:

Scattering occurs when there are velocity heterogeneities in

the medium with wavelengths on the order of of the wave.

A simulation of 100 randomly-perturbed scatterers

Snieder et al., Science, 2002

Moving the scatterers (here, 1/40th of the distance shown,

so the perturbation is visible) mostly changes the shapes
and amplitudes of the waveforms

Waveforms
measured in a
granite sample
at temperatures
of 45C (blue)
and 50C (red).

Snieder et al., Science, 2002

Changing the matrix velocity, by contrast, introduces a shift

(delay or advance) that increases with coda time.

Scattering:
Interesting aside:
Coda energy in the
Earth tends to
attenuate much more
rapidly than on the
Moon!
This is partly because
lunar regolith is
highly fractured by
impacts, but mostly
because it contains
no fluids (and
consequently much
less intrinsic
attenuation!)

Intrinsic Attenuation:
Spring constant k

Intrinsic attenuation, or anelasticity,

describes the process by which elastic energy
in the Earth is converted to heat when the
seismic wave induces unrecoverable
deformation.
To examine this, lets consider a spring:
For an idealized spring,

i 0 tt 0
2u
m 2 ku 0 has solution u t Ae
t
k
with oscillation frequency 0

More realistically though, internal friction in the

spring will damp the system resulting in
where is a damping
2u
u
m 2 m
ku 0
factor and Q 0/

is called the quality factor.

Mass
m

Intrinsic Attenuation:
Reu t A0e

Spring constant k

This system has a solution with real and

imaginary parts; the actual displacement is the
real part and takes the form: t
0

2Q

cos t

i.e., a harmonic oscillator with an exponential

decay of amplitude. Here, A0 is the initial
displacement (at time t = 0) and

Important to note:

0 1

1
4Q 2

High frequencies attenuate more than low

Harmonic frequency is changed by attenuation

Higher Q results in less change to frequency

and less intrinsic attenuation for given time

Mass
m

Generally,
loss of
amplitude due
to intrinsic
attenuation is
much greater
than that due
to partitioning,
spreading and
the other
amplitude
effects we
have
discussed

Definition of the quality factor

1
E

Q
2 E

Energy dissipated in
a cycle

Energy stored

f
A A0 exp
Qt

Putting everything together

Aij ( f ) Si ( f )I j ( f )Gij (R)Bij ( f ,R

fR
Bij ( f ) exp(
)
vQ

Intrinsic attenuation
(1) Movements along mineral dislocations
(2) Shear heating at grain boundaries
Affected by temperature, pressure,
frequency, and medium properties

 Attenuation property is complementary to

velocity.

Haberland et al., GRL 2003

The key here is to correlate a decrease in Q with fluids in the crust and
mantle. The fluid layer again represents melting due to subduction.
Myers et al., 1995

23

(Romanowicz & Mitchell, 2007)

Nakajima et al., 2003, GRL

How to estimate Q
Code wave
Surface wave
Body wave
Amplitude data
.

Coda wave
attenuation

Kumar et al., 2005

Estimating Q from body wave

----- using t*
Aij ( f ) Si ( f )I j ( f )Gij (R)Bij ( f ,R)

fi
ln[A( fi )] ln(0 ) ln[S( fi )] ln 1 c ( fit*)
f
2

Site Response

Attenuation Model

Amplitude Q
tomography
(Shunping Pei)
ABCE
Amplitude of
horizontal component

Period

2005 1 1
O=03 15 40.2
+/- 0.04s
LAT=26.92 N
+/- 0.30km
LONG=100.31 E +/- 0.33km
DEPTH= 10 km +/- 0.14km
STATIONS USED = 6, STAND DEV= 2.63s
ML=2.9/ 6,
EYA 0.9 202 Pg
03 15 56.4 0.7
Sg
03 16 07.6 -0.1
SMN
ML=3.0
0.6 0.20
SME
0.6 0.61
PZH 1.4 108 Pn
03 16 03.1 -2.3
Pg 03 16 05.0 0.9
Sg
03 16 19.4 -3.2
SMN
ML=2.9
0.6 0.17
SME
0.7 0.18
XAC 2.1 347 Pn
03 16 15.7 0.5
Pg 03 16 19.6 3.0
Sg
03 16 44.5 -0.4
SMN
ML=3.2
1.0 0.11
SME
1.0 0.23
TCG1 2.5 221 Pg
03 16 24.0 0.0
Sg
03 16 55.7 -2.2
SMN
ML=3.7
0.6 0.52
SME
0.5 0.42
KMI 2.8 128 Pg
03 16 28.9 -1.1
Sg
03 17 07.4 -1.1
SMN
ML=2.8
0.8 0.045
SME
0.7 0.047
ZOT 3.1 82 ePg 03 16 36.8 2.5
Sg
03 17 14.6 -1.5
SMN
ML=2.8
1.0 0.031
SME
1.0 0.038

Theory and Method

Station

Source
Crust
Upper mantle

Aij ( f ) O j ( f ) I i ( f ) Si ( f )Gij ( R) Bij ( f , R )

Aij ( f ) O j ( f ) I i ( f ) Si ( f )Gij ( R) Bij ( f , R)

fR
1
Bij ( f ) exp(
) exp(cQ0 R)
vQ
Q Q0 f

c f

/v
1
0

Yij ln Aij ( f ) ln Gij ( R ) ai b j Q cR

ai ln Si ( f )

b j ln O0 ( f )
1
0

Yij ln Aij ( f ) ln Gij ( R) p * M L ai b j Q cR

b j ln O0 ( f ) p * M L

Yij ai b j Q

1
0 k

cRijk

ML Tomography in North China

ABCE of 1985 to 1995
(Annual Bulletin of Chinese Earthquakes)
1. Each event was recorded by at least 2 stations,
2. Residuals between -2.0 ~ 2.0 ,
3. Period T of the Sg wave maximum amplitude (A) is between 0.4~2.0s,
4. Epicentral distance is between 100km-800km.
5. Event depth is less than 20km.

10899 amplitude data

1732 events
91
stations

10899 Amplitude data

1732 Events (+)
91
Stations ()

Histogram of ML distribution

Result

Earthquakes with M>7

Phillips et al., 2005

Q from the tomographic inversion of 1 Hz Lg amplitude ratios

Liu et al., 2004

Yij ai b j Q

1
0 k

cRijk

Yij ai b j Q

1
0 k

cRijk

Checkerboard Test
2 2

Checkerboard Test
1.5 1.5

Standard deviation 0.67

Standard deviation 0.41

Summary
Crustal attenuation can be reconstructed by tomographic
imaging method using amplitude data.
Attenuation levels are correlated with regional tectonic structure.
High attenuation often occurs in active tectonic areas with
significant faulting, while attenuation is low in the stable Ordos
Craton.
The estimate of attenuation shows a close correlation with
topography.
Q0 is generally low in basins, whereas high Q0 mostly occurs in
mountains and uplift regions where crystalline basement appears
in the surface. It is possible that low Q0 in basins is caused by
fluid in the upper crust, and deep sediment in basins, while high
Q0 in the mountains and uplift regions results from the presence
of old, dense rocks there.
(Published in BSSA(2006))