On the P-to-S ratio of seismicity around the Mount St. Helens
Abstract
Accurate measurements of P/S ratios at local-regional scale are often
challenged by near-distance failure and/or sparse monitoring. During
June 2014 - Aug. 2016 (iMUSH project), the XD array was deployed around
the Mount St. Helens (MSH, hear and after) within ~150
km of the summit. The array contains ~80 three-component
broadband stations, forming a nearly uniform monitoring system that
recorded 23 active shots and 407 of M>1 earthquake within
the 2-year period. The determined local magnitudes for the shots range
from 0.9 to 2.3. Most earthquakes are deep (>10 km) and the
shots are 10m below the surface. Due to the complexity of near surface
structure, waveforms of the shots have both strong P and S energy on the
transverse components, leaving them identical to earthquakes. This study
takes advantage of this integrate dataset to systematically evaluates
potential contributing factors to the P/S ratio measurements, including:
source type (i.e., explosive vs. shear), distance, depth, and station
location (i.e., site effect, coverage). We also compared between
different frequency ranges, window choices, methods and component
choices (i.e., RTZ vs. LQT) that differentiate the shots from the
earthquakes. We observed no clear dependence for P-to-S ratio over
depth, azimuth nor magnitude, while other parameters could be optimized
to isolate contributions from the source. For example, the P-to-S ratios
increase with frequency from 4Hz to 18 Hz and shots show much larger
increasements than the earthquakes. We suggest that the near-source
challenges could be relieved by: 1) use narrow windows to capture early
phase and avoid overlap between S-coda and surface wave, 2) use higher
frequency range to enhance body wave signal-to-noise ratio and allow for
enough period within narrow phase windows, 3) rotate from the RTZ system
to LQT system to maximize P wave energy and/or 4) include the transverse
(T) component in P-phase energy calculations. With these optimizations,
our averaged ratios are consistent throughout all distances (6-160 km)
and clearly separate the shots from the earthquakes. In addition,
regardless of the source type, the P-to-S ratios also vary with station
location, which could be attributable to site effect and local
structures.