A Frequency Domain Methodology for Quantitative Evaluation of Diffuse
Wavefield with Applications to Seismic Imaging
Abstract
Fully diffuse seismic wavefields are ideal for Ambient Noise Imaging
(ANI) of subsurface structures. However, the lack of feasible methods to
identify highly diffuse wave hampers applications of ANI for imaging
including evaluation of seismic attenuation and temporal changes with
high temporal resolution. Conventional ANI approaches require data
normalization, which results in significant loss of amplitude and phase
information. Here we propose a method to quantitatively evaluate the
degree of diffuseness of seismic wavefields by analyzing their
statistical characteristics of modal amplitudes in the frequency domain.
Tests on synthetic waveform and real data show that the method can
effectively distinguish between diffuse and non-diffuse waveforms. By
identifying a 60-second-long diffuse coda of a local M 2.2 earthquake
recorded by a dense nodal array on the San Jacinto Fault Zone, we
successfully extract high-quality dispersion curve and Q-value without
performing data normalization. Our proposed method can advance the
imaging of subsurface velocity and attenuation structures and monitoring
temporal changes for scientific studies and engineering applications.