A comment on the use of spectral characteristics of teleseismic body waves to evaluate fine crustal structure

Abstract

An investigation of the crustal response in the time and frequency domains is presented to show that for models with similar crustal transit times of P and S waves, any important changes in the internal configuration of the crust such as layering, layer thickness and velocity contrast only influence the amplitudes of the transfer function ratio. Frequency positions of peaks and troughs remain unperturbed unless the total transit time of P and/or S waves through the crust are varied. This would imply that fine crustal structure derived from a matching of peak positions of observed spectral ratios with theoretical transfer function ratios, as is commonly practiced, is not very meaningful. This limitation in the application of the spectral ratio method for detailed crustal structure is demonstrated using two recent applications of this technique.