S U M M A R YTo study the applicability of the passive seismic interferometry technique to near-surface geological studies, seismic noise recordings from a small scale 2-D array of seismic stations were performed in the test site of Nauen (Germany). Rayleigh wave Green's functions were estimated for different frequencies. A tomographic inversion of the traveltimes estimated for each frequency from the Green's functions is then performed, allowing the laterally varying 3-D surface wave velocity structure below the array to be retrieved at engineering-geotechnical scales. Furthermore, a 2-D S-wave velocity cross-section is obtained by combining 1-D velocity structures derived from the inversion of the dispersion curves extracted at several points along a profile where other geophysical analyses were performed. It is shown that the crosssection from passive seismic interferometry provides a clear image of the local structural heterogeneities that are in excellent agreement with georadar and geoelectrical results. Such findings indicate that the interferometry analysis of seismic noise is potentially of great interest for deriving the shallow 3-D velocity structure in urban areas.

Surface-wave dispersion analysis is widely used in geophysics to infer a shear wave velocity model of the subsoil for a wide variety of applications. A shear-wave velocity model is obtained from the solution of an inverse problem based on the surface wave dispersive propagation in vertically heterogeneous media. The analysis can be based either on active source measurements or on seismic noise recordings. This paper discusses the most typical choices for collection and interpretation of experimental data, providing a state of the art on the different steps involved in surface wave surveys. In particular, the different strategies for processing experimental data and to solve the inverse problem are presented, along with their advantages and disadvantages. Also, some issues related to the characteristics of passive surface wave data and their use in H/V spectral ratio technique are discussed as additional information to be used independently or in conjunction with dispersion analysis. Finally, some recommendations for the use of surface wave methods are presented, while also outlining future trends in the research of this topic

We apply a spectral decomposition approach to isolate the source spectra from propagation and site effects and, in turn, to estimate the source parameters of small-to-moderate earthquakes that occurred in central Italy. The data set is composed of about 400,000 waveforms relevant to 4111 earthquakes in the moment magnitude range 1.5–6.5, recorded by a high-density network of stations installed in the study area. We first investigate the reliability of the source parameters for small magnitudes through numerical simulations. We generate synthetic spectra for different source scaling models and near-surface attenuation effects, considering the source–station geometry and the data availability of the central Italy data set. Our analysis with synthetics shows that the spectral decomposition is effective in isolating the source contributions from other factors. Moreover, the analysis of the residual distributions suggests that moment magnitude 1.8 is the lower bound for the retrieval of reliable Brune’s source parameters, although we observe an increase of residual’s variability below magnitude 3, and the estimated source parameters could be biased below magnitude 2.3. Remarkably, the assessment of the stress drop Δσ for small events is strongly hampered by site-specific attenuation near the surface. In view of the results with synthetics, we analyze the source parameters of earthquakes recorded in central Italy. The corner frequency versus seismic moment relationship describes a source scaling in which Δσ increases with increasing moment magnitude Mw, the mean Δσ varying from 0.1 MPa for Mw<2 to 7.9 MPa for Mw>5. In particular, Δσ increases mainly for Mw in the ranges 2.5–3 and 4.5–5.2. The corner frequencies estimated from the apparent source spectra do not show any dependence on hypocentral distance and magnitude, confirming that uncorrected anelastic attenuation effects do not significantly bias the results.

We propose a new real‐time approach to detect, locate, and estimate the volume of rockslides by analyzing waveforms acquired from broadband regional seismic networks. The identification of signals generated by rockslides from other sources, such as natural and/or induced earthquakes, is accomplished by exploiting the ratio between local magnitudes (ML) and duration magnitudes (MD). We found that signals associated with rockslides have ML/MD < 0.8, while for earthquakes ML/MD ≅ 1. In addition, we derived an empirical relationship between MD and rockslide volumes, obtaining a preliminary characterization of rockslide volume within seconds after their occurrence. The key points of this study are presented by testing the hypothesis on a recent rockslide event that occurred in northern Italy. We discuss also the potential evolution of the methodology for early warning and/or rapid response purposes.

[1] A joint inversion of phase velocity and H/V ratio curves, both obtained from seismic-noise recordings, permits the retrieval of the shear-wave velocity structure of local sedimentary cover. Our inversion scheme uses a genetic algorithm and considers the influence of higher modes on the data sets. Encouraged by the results published previously on joint inversion (Parolai et al., 2005) we went one step further. We found, using a synthetic data set, that the impedance contrast at the sediment-bedrock interface has a strong influence on the shape of the H/V ratio curve, which therefore allows the bedrock S-wave velocity to be well constrained in the joint-inversion procedure. Our observations were further confirmed using a real data set. Citation: Picozzi, M., S. Parolai, and S. M. Richwalski (2005), Joint inversion of H/V ratios and dispersion curves from seismic noise: Estimating the S-wave velocity of bedrock, Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L11308,