Estimation of maximum mass velocity from macroseismic data: A new method and application to archeoseismological data

An important task in seismic hazard assessment is the estimation of intensity and frequency of rare strong seismic shaking, in particular, the long-term peak ground velocity values(PGVs). A recently proposed method is suitable for simply estimating PGVs based on the examination of the magnitude of displacements of rock blocks. The effectiveness of this method is demonstrated by results of studies on the source zones of two large earthquakes and a vicinity of one strong explosion. In this study, the method is applied to the examination of archeoseismological data from the ancient Rehovot-ba-Negev city and other ancient cities from the Negev desert(in Southern Israel) where numerous evidences of presumable seismic damage were found earlier. The cities and also a sophisticated irrigation system within the region, which existed in the Negev desert, were abandoned however in the middle of the seventh century. The abandonment could be caused by a combined effect, from not only the cessation of the state support from Byzantium as a result of the Arab conquest but also the severe destruction from the strong earthquake that hit the area at that time. The intensities of the seismic events that hit the cities were estimated earlier, which are within the range of 8 e9. Our estimates indicate that the PGV values are about 1.5 m/s. Hence, the magnitude of the causative earthquake could be in the range M z 6.5 e7.5, and the location of the epicenter might be at a distance of a few dozens of kilometers from the ancient Rehovot-ba-Negev city, while the other variants associated with the earthquake seem to be less probable.

Time distribution characteristics of regional macroseismic activity in the Sichuan-Yunnan region and its significance to mid-long term prediction

The earthquakes with Ms≥6.0 are often gathered into belts or clusters and are roughly consistent with tectonic structure trends in the Sichuan-Yunnan (Chuan-Dian) region. The middle south part(98°-106°E, 21°-34°N) of South-North Seismic Zone can be zoned into seven small areas. There all were strong quakes with M_s≥7.0 historically in each small area. Ten earthquakes with M_s≥7.0 have occurred in this region since 1970 and they appeared in five small areas respectively. The relationships between occurrence-time and cumulative frequencies of strong quakes in these five areas are shown to be an exponential distribution or power function. By examining the inner coincidence it is indicated that these relationships are of definite significance to mid-long term macroseismic prediction of each area.

Macroseismic intensity attenuation in Iran

Macroseismic intensity data plays an important role in the process of seismic hazard analysis as well in developing of reliable earthquake loss models. This paper presents a physical-based model to predict macroseismic intensity attenuation based on 560 intensity data obtained in Iran in the time period 1975-2013. The geometric spreading and energy absorption of seismic waves have been considered in the proposed model. The proposed easy to implement relation describes the intensity simply as a function of moment magnitude, source to site distance and focal depth. The prediction capability of the proposed model is assessed by means of residuals analysis. Prediction results have been compared with those of other intensity prediction models for Italy, Turkey, Iran and central Asia. The results indicate the higher attenuation rate for the study area in distances less than 70 km.

Broadband ground motion simulation using a hybrid approach of the May 21, 2021 M7.4 earthquake in Maduo, Qinghai, China

In this study,the broadband ground motions of the 2021 M7.4 Maduo earthquake were simulated to overcome the scarcity of ground motion recordings and the low resolution of macroseismic intensity map in sparsely populated high-altitude regions.The simulation was conducted with a hybrid methodology,combining a stochastic high-frequency simulation with a low-frequency ground motion simulation,from the regional 1-D velocity structure model and the Wang WM et al.(2022)source rupture model,respectively.We found that the three-component waveforms simulated for specific stations matched the waveforms recorded at those stations,in terms of amplitude,duration,and frequency content.The validation results demonstrate the ability of the hybrid simulation method to reproduce the main characteristics of the observed ground motions for the 2021 Maduo earthquake over a broad frequency range.Our simulations suggest that the official map of macroseismic intensity tends to overestimate shaking by one intensity unit.Comparisons of simulations with empirical ground motion models indicate generally good consistency between the simulated and empirically predicted intensity measures.The high-frequency components of ground motions were found to be more prominent,while the low-frequency components were not,which is unexpected for large earthquakes.Our simulations provide valuable insight into the effects of source complexity on the level and variability of the resulting ground motions.The acceleration and velocity time histories and corresponding response spectra were provided for selected representative sites where no records were available.The simulated results have important implications for evaluating the performance of engineering structures in the epicentral regions of this earthquake and for estimating seismic hazards in the Tibetan regions where no strong ground motion records are available for large earthquakes.

Field survey around strong motion stations and its implications on the seismic intensity in the Lushan earthquake on April 20,2013

The Ms7.0 Lushan earthquake on April 20, 2013 is another destructive event in China since the Ms8.0 Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 and Ms7.1 Yushu earth- quake in 2010. A large number of strong motion recordings were accumulated by the National Strong Motion Obser- vation Network System of China. The maximum peak ground acceleration （PGA） at Station 51BXD in Baoxing Country is recorded as -1,005.3 cm/s2, which is even larger than the maximum one in the Wenchuan earthquake. A field survey around three typical strong motion stations confirms that the earthquake damage is consistent with the issued map of macroseismic intensity. For the oscillation period 0.3-1.0 s which is the common natural period range of the Chinese civil building, a comparison shows that the observed response spectrums are considerably smaller than the designed values in the Chinese code and this could be one of the reasons that the macroseismic intensity is lower than what we expected despite the high amplitude of PGAs. The Housner spectral intensities from 16 stations are also basically correlated with their macroseismic intensities, and the empirical distribution of spectral intensities from Lushan and Wenchuan Earthquakes under the Chinese scale is almost identical with those under the European scale.

Source Parameters Evaluation of the 28^(th) December 1908 and 16^(th) January 1975 Earthquakes in the Messina Straits(Southern Italy)

The Calabria-Peloritani Arc is one of the most seismically active regions of Southern Italy.The most damaging event(Ⅰ0=ⅪMSK)occurred on December 28th,1908 in the Messina Straits area.This event,which caused at least 85000 casualties and widespread damage,has been identified as the greatest European seismic disaster of the 20th century.

The IGN MEMS Accelerographs Record the First Accelerograms in Different Locations in the Lorca City

A recent earthquake (13 December 2018, Mag. 3.5) has allowed the recording 11 accelerograms from a network microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) low-cost accelerograph Silex. The National Geographic Institute of Spain (IGN) has built this kind of equipment and has installed in the Lorca City. The epicenter of the earthquake is only approximately 6 km from Lorca. This is important because an earthquake hit this city on 11th May, 2011. This earthquake caused nine deaths, more than 400 injured people and a loss estimated about $1 billion. We have also got records from two commercial accelerograhs GeoSig GMSPlus and GeoSig GSR-18 in two different stations in Lorca and we have been able to compare these signals with signals from Silex. We have studied carefully the records from places where peak accelerations are noticeably higher than in other locations. We have seen that the waveforms of these records have different features and we think that the effect sites are very important. Finally we have also compared the peak acceleration with macroseismic intensity obtained from questionnaries. We have checked there is no clear correlation between instrumental acceleration and macroseismic intensity at least for earthquake with small magnitudes.

Relation between the evolution of seismic apparent strain field and the region of strong earthquake occurrence

In this paper, according to the data on the middle and strong earthquakes in China, we have preliminary studied the relation between the characteristic of space-time evolution of the seismic apparent strain field and the regions of 31 macroseism events since 1955. The result shows that, there is a rather well correlation between the anomaly region of seismic apparent strain and the zone of macroseism event occurrence within the time range of one to about five years. The R value of the application of the abnormal region of seismic apparent strain to predicting the area of strong earthquake occurrence is 0.458, and the empirical possibility of forecasting the region of macroseism occurrence is 0.625, and so the forecasting effect is comparatively well. Finally, the main results obtained above are discussed preliminarily.