Abstract
The S wave from a local earthquake generally consists of several pulses, in contrast to a simple pulse of P wave. This results in a large uncertainty in the estimation of seismic moment and wave energy when the window length for S-wave analysis is not chosen properly. In this study, we propose a new method to define objectively an appropriate time window length of the S wave for estimation of source characteristics based on the S-wave to P-wave energy ratio for a point shear dislocation source. Analyzing waveform data of 97 local earthquakes in the Kanto region, Japan, whose magnitudes M range from 3.3 to 6.0, we obtained simple equations for predicting the time window length of the S-wave TS as a function of earthquake magnitude or pulse width of P-wave TP; we got TS ≈ 1.8 TP for the relation between TP and TS. Applying the S-wave window thus defined, we estimated seismic energy E, seismic moment M0, and corner frequency fc for both P and S waves. Regression analysis of those parameters revealed (1) our method to define TS is confirmed by the fact that the seismic moment determined from P and S waves are consistent; (2) in the range of 1014 < M0 < 1018 (N·m), M0 is almost proportional to f−3c both for P and S waves; (3) the value of E/M0 is 2.7 ∼ 4.0 × 10−5; and (4) breakdown of the scaling relation is seen at M ≦ 4.
Time window to constrain the corner value of the global seismic-moment distribution
