Separation of source, attenuation and site parameters of 2 moderate earthquakes in France: an elastic radiative transfer approach

Abstract

Summary An accurate magnitude estimation is necessary to properly evaluate seismic hazard, especially in low to moderate seismicity areas such as Metropolitan France. However, magnitudes of small earthquakes are subject to large uncertainties caused by major high-frequency propagation effects which are generally not properly considered. To address this issue, we developed a method to separate source, attenuation and site parameters from the elastic radiative transfer modeling of the full energy envelopes of seismograms. The key feature of our approach is the treatment of attenuation -both scattering and absorption- in a simple but realistic velocity model of the Earth’s lithosphere, including a velocity discontinuity at the Moho. To reach this goal, we developed a 2-step inversion procedure, allowing first to extract attenuation parameters for each source-station path from the whole observed energy envelope using the Levenberg-Marquardt and grid-search algorithms, then to determine site amplification and the source displacement spectrum from which the moment magnitude Mw is extracted. In the first step, we use the forward modeling procedure of Heller et al. (2022) in order to simulate energy envelopes by taking into account the full treatment of wave polarization, the focal mechanism of the source and the scattering anisotropy. The inversion procedure is then applied to the 2019 ML 5.2 Le Teil and 2014 ML 4.5 Lourdes earthquakes which both occurred in southern France. Data from 6 stations are selected for each event. The inversion results confirm a significant variability in the attenuation parameters (scattering and absorption) at regional scale and a strong frequency dependence. Scattering appears to be stronger towards the French Alps and Western Pyrenees. Absorption is stronger as frequency increases. Although not very resolvable, the mechanism of scattering appears to be forward or very forward. By inverting the source spectrum, we determine moment magnitudes Mw of 5.02 ± 0.17 for the Le Teil earthquake and 4.17 ± 0.15 for the Lourdes earthquake.