Imaging Urban Hidden Faults with Ambient Noise Recorded by Dense Seismic Arrays
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1.
California Institute of Technology
Abstract
The identification of preexisting near‐surface faults represents a piece of crucial information needed to correctly assess the seismic hazard of any area. The mapping of these structures is particularly challenging in densely populated and heavily urbanized areas. We use ambient seismic noise recorded by a dense array in Seal Beach, California, to image shallow fault lines via a reflected surface‐wave analysis. Our results highlight the presence of previously unknown shallow faults that correlate remarkably well with shallow seismicity and active survey images.
Copyright and License
© 2024 Seismological Society of America.
Acknowledgement
The authors gratefully acknowledge LA seismic at LAseismic.com (last accessed February 2024) for the use of the Seal Beach data. The authors thank Eric Campbell for facilitating the use of the seismic data, and Dan Gish and Steve Boljen for providing us with the migrated seismic sections of the Seal Beach survey. The authors also thank Editor Adam Ringler and Dr. Kim Olsen for the constructive comments made during the reviewing of the original article.
Contributions
Author Contributions: conceptualization by E. B. and R. W. C.; methodology by E. B., J. C. C., and R. W. C.; visualization by E. B.; supervision by R. W. C.; writing—original draft by E. B.; and writing—review and editing by E. B., J. C. C., and R. W. C.
Data Availability
Permission from LA Seismic is required to access the raw seismic data. The correlograms computed from the raw data and scripts employed in this study are available at doi: 10.5281/zenodo.10553068. Information extending the analysis and additional supporting evidence related to the study are included within the Supplemental Material.
Supplementary data
Conflict of Interest
The authors acknowledge that there are no conflicts of interest recorded.
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Additional details
- ISSN
- 1938-2057
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, Seismological Laboratory