Estimation of source parameters and attenuation using digital waveforms of Al-Ays 2009 earthquake, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

On 19 May 2009, an earthquake sequence of M w = 4.8 occurred at 25.20°N 37.76°E about 60 km onshore of the Red Sea coastline, Saudi Arabia. In the present study, the digital waveform data from the largest four events were used to estimate the source parameters and attenuation characteristics along the source-to-station path in the Arabian Shield. A grid search technique, combined with an assumption of circular source model, was applied to find the best-fit spectral amplitude over the space parameters: long period spectral level (Ω 0), corner frequency (f 0) and asymptotic high-frequency fall-off (γ). Consequently, the spectral parameters were used to estimate source parameters: seismic moment, fault radius (assumed circular rupture model) and stress drop. Seismic moments are founded to be within the range of 2.34E+14 to 2.83E+16 Nm and their corresponding moment magnitudes range from 3.5 to 4.8; the fault radius ranges from 369 to 1,498 m, and stress drops are observed in the range of 8.7 to 32.0 b. The spectral slopes beyond the corner frequency displayed ω −2.4 to ω −2.6 behaviours in contrast with Brune's source model of ω −2. This finding requires more detailed investigations on large data sets to distinguish the behaviour mechanism of the spectral slopes at high frequencies. By taking the ratio between observed and calculated spectra, the attenuation curves for P and S waves were derived along the source-to-station paths. The preliminarily results exhibited high quality factors of Q α = 3,883 and Q β = 3,530 for P and S waves, respectively. To this end, the ratio Q β/Q α is founded to be slightly less than unity indicating that the body waves from source-to-station paths crossed a crustal volume that is partially saturated with fluids causing lower attenuation effect on P waves than on S waves in the Arabian Shield.