Microseismic field affected by local geological heterogeneities and microseismic sounding of the medium

Abstract

Experiments and numerical model studies have shown that heterogeneities of the Earth’s crust distort the spectrum of the low frequency microseismic field, decreasing spectral amplitudes of a specific frequency f at the Earth’s surface over high velocity heterogeneities and increasing them above low velocity heterogeneities. The frequency f is connected with the depth of a heterogeneity H and the velocity of the fundamental mode of Rayleigh waves VR(f) through the relation H = 0.5 VR(f)/f. The low frequency microseismic field is considered as the superposition of trains of Rayleigh fundamental modes with different frequency spectra. The paper proposes an experimentally tested technology enabling the determination of the deep structure of complex geological objects using data on the microseismic background field.