Site Effects and Microzonation in Acapulco

The region around Acapulco, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, is subjected to large seismic risk. This paper presents a contribution to improve microzonation of this region. We investigated site effects using three basic sources of data: strong-motion records from all of the instruments that have operated within the area; weak-motion records obtained from the installation and operation of a temporal, digital, seismograph network; and measurements of microtremors at 35 sites. We compared and evaluated different techniques of data analysis. We show that very coherent results are obtained from different kinds of measurement, and that microtremor records are very useful to interpolate sparse earthquake data. We propose two maps that reflect the fundamental characteristics of site effects in the area: dominant period and maximum relative amplification. These maps may be used to improve current microzonation of Acapulco.