Use of site amplification and anelastic attenuation for the determination of source parameters of the Sikkim earthquake of September 18, 2011, using far-field strong-motion data

An earthquake of magnitude 6.9 (M w ) occurred in the Sikkim region of India on September 18, 2011. This earthquake is recorded on strong-motion network in Uttarakhand Himalaya located about 900 km away from the epicenter of this earthquake. In this paper acceleration record from six far-field stations has been used to compute the source parameters of this earthquake. The acceleration spectra of ground motion at these far-field stations are strongly affected by both local site effects and near-site anelastic attenuation. In the present work the spectrum of S-phase recorded at these far-field stations has been corrected for anelastic attenuation at both source and site and the site amplification terms. Site amplifications at different stations and near-site shear wave attenuation factor have been computed by the technique of inversion of acceleration spectra given by Joshi et al. (Pure Appl Geophys 169:1821–1845, 2012a ). For estimation of site amplification and shear wave quality factor [Q β (f)] at the recording sites, ten local events recorded at various stations between July 2011 and December 2011 have been used. The obtained source spectrum from acceleration records is compared with the theoretical source spectrum defined by Brune (J Geophys Res 76:5002, 1970 ) at each station for both horizontal components of the records. Iterative forward modeling of theoretical source spectrum gives the average estimate of seismic moment (M o ), source radius (r o ) and stress drop (Δσ) as (3.2 ± 0.8) × 10 26 dyne cm, 13.3 ± 0.8 km and 59.2 ± 8.8 bars, respectively, for the Sikkim earthquake of September 18, 2011. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014