Preliminary analysis of the spectral content of P and S waves from local earthquakes in the Garm, Tadjikistan region

Abstract

abstract This paper reports preliminary results of an analysis of the spectral content of seismic waves from over 1,000 local earthquakes in the Garm, Tadjikistan region. Very low values of Q (∼100) were obtained for the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary rocks of the Peter I Range compared with those in the crystalline rock of the South Tien Shan (Q ≳ 500). For events with the same low frequency spectra, earthquakes in the South Tien Shan are recorded with more energy at higher frequencies than earthquakes in the Peter I Range, at least in part, because of the greater attenuation of the sedimentary rock in the latter region. There is a wide variety of spectra radiated by earthquakes throughout the Garm region, but a marked difference between spectra radiated by earthquakes from these two regions is not apparent. Nevertheless although calculated stress drops of earthquakes appear to vary considerably throughout the region, there appears to be a dependence on the type of rock in which the earthquakes occurred. The variation in calculated stress drops, however, is greater within either region than between the two. For most regions and for most of the range of seismic moments studied the shape of the spectrum is relatively independent of seismic moment. Consequently, calculated stress drops increase with seismic moment, with the functional dependence varying from region to region. For the largest events, the spectrum shifts to lower frequencies with increasing moment and stress drops become essentially independent of moment. Preliminary results suggest that the stress drops are not detectably different for earthquakes with thrust or normal faulting fault-plane solutions. A limited amount of data are consistent with a change in spectral content and stress drop of earthquakes in the vicinity of and before stronger earthquakes but a clear, consistent pattern is not yet evident. Toward high frequencies, S-wave spectra both begin to decrease at lower frequencies and seem to decrease more rapidly than P-wave spectra, in contrast with predictions of published dislocation models of earthquakes.