borehole response studies at the garner valley downhole array southern california the garner valley downhole array gvda consists of a set of seven downhole strong motion instruments ranging from 0 to 500 m depth one of the objectives of this experiment is to estimate site response and study wave propagation as the energy travels from the bedrock underneath the site up through the soil column the gvda velocity structure is studied by computing synthetic accelerograms for a small event located at an epicentral distance of 10 km these synthetics simulate well the data recorded at the borehole stations in addition theoretical transfer functions are calculated using the obtained velocity model and compare well with the empirical transfer functions from 54 recorded events it is also observed that the downgoing wave effect is predominant in the first 87 m and is strongly reduced at depth using the velocity structure at gvda and the transfer function results it has also been possible to develop a simple method to compute the incident wave field which is needed in nonlinear site response for instance recently there have been many comparative studies between horizontal to vertical h v spectral ratios and traditional spectral ratios although many of these studies show that h v spectral ratios can reproduce the shape of the site response curve most show differences in the amplitude level in the case of garner valley where we have both surface and multiple borehole instruments we find that this discrepancy in amplitude of the site response estimates is because the vertical component has significant site response associated with it due to s to p conversions that begin in the weathered granite boundary at 87 m depth manuscript received 27 august 2001

a comparison and test of various site response estimation techniques including three that are not reference site dependent abstract we compare various site response estimation techniques using after shock data of the 1989 loma prieta earthquake collected in oakland california because of recent interest in comparing results from weak and strong motion to infer any nonlinearity and between direct s and coda waves we pay particular attention to the uncertainties first sediment to bedrock spectral ratio estimates between pairs of sites are compared with those obtained from various generalized inversion approaches where the source and site effects of multiply recorded events are solved for simultaneously we find that the site amplification factors are very similar among these approaches but that the uncertainties can be significantly different depending on how the data are weighted we also examine and test three site response estimation techniques that do not rely on a reference site to estimate source and path effects the first involves a parameterized source and path effects inversion even when the bedrock data are excluded from consideration this approach is found to reveal the frequency dependence of site response at each of the sediment sites the second technique involves taking horizontal to vertical component spectral ratios receiver function type estimates of shear wave aftershock data these are also found to reveal the frequency dependence of site response at the sediment sites and the results for the bedrock site are relatively flat and near unity the third estimate is formed by taking horizontal to vertical component ratios of ambient seismic noise and these are shown to reveal the fundamental resonant frequency of the sediment sites unfortunately discrepancies exist among all of the site response estimates and with one dimensional predictions with respect to a frequency independent scaling factor nevertheless the highly frequency dependent character of site response is well constrained and the fact that non reference site dependent methods are capable of revealing this is promising for site specific hazard assessments in regions that lack adequate reference sites

dependence of sediment filled valley response on input amplitude and valley properties abstract for three sediment filled valleys average site responses were experimentally determined and found to apply to within 0 25 log units to earthquakes at any azimuth and to s waves and coda waves for one of these valleys ground accelerations were measured over the range 10 5 to 0 2 g and no significant differences in site responses were apparent in two valleys with sediment basement impedance contrasts of 5 1 and 6 1 average site amplification is as much as a factor of five in certain frequency bands in another valley with a sediment basement impedance contrast of 3 1 sediment amplification is about a factor of two the duration of motion on the valley sediments in narrow frequency bands is equal to that on the bordering rock implying that the observed amplification is not due to a high q resonance of the sediments

frequency dependent site amplification factors using the s wave coda for the island of hawaii abstract the coda method has been utilized to determine the seismic response at various sites on the island of hawaii using data from the hawaiian volcano observatory hvo seismic network site amplification factors are calculated using spectral ratios of s wave coda amplitude measured for many events and lapse times between 33 and 59 sec for frequencies between 1 5 and 15 0 hz we find that these site amplification factors vary by factors of as much as 12 for a given frequency due to differences in absorption and or impedance properties beneath the site similar to results from japan central california and long valley the coda site amplification factors showed strong correlation with station residuals for magnitude determined by johnson unpublished results for the hvo network between 1 5 and 6 0 hz johnson unpublished results made an independent determination of event magnitudes and station site corrections by measuring averaged windowed amplitudes of the s wave and its coda using a method previously tested with data from the southern california seismic network johnson 1979 station calibrations were simultaneously determined and included the effects of instrument gain and site effect after correcting johnson9s unpublished results results for the instrument gain provided by hvo we obtain correlations similar to the previous works with the best correlation appearing at 3 0 hz despite the complex subsurface structures on the island of hawaii the frequency dependence of our coda site amplification factors displays a remarkable regional trend in some cases plausible causes related to the underlying geologic structures can explain the similar frequency dependence in other cases the similarity cannot be explained or may be coincidental similar frequency dependences among stations accompanied by a large variability in the absolute level of the site effect may be due to inaccurate instrument calibrations

paleoclimatic signature in terrestrial flood deposits large scale process simulation was used to reconstruct the geologic evolution during the past 600 000 years of an alluvial fan in northern california in order to reproduce the sedimentary record the simulation accounted for the dynamics of river flooding sedimentation subsidence land movement that resulted from faulting and sea level changes paleoclimatic trends induced fluctuations in stream flows and dominated the development of the sedimentary deposits the process simulation approach serves as a quantitative means to explore the genesis of sedimentary architecture and its link to past climatic conditions and fault motion

study of weak and strong ground motion including nonlinearity from the northridge california earthquake sequence abstract this article presents a new method to estimate s wave site response relative to a regional layered crustal model the method is useful for site specific strong motion prediction because the estimated site response functions are referenced to an idealized regional layered model for which we know the ground response exactly we applied this method to the northridge earthquake sequence we determined the site amplifications from aftershocks with magnitudes 2 6 to 4 3 at 21 stations that were colocated with strong motion stations these site response functions were then used to modify synthetic seismogram calculated for the northridge mainshock in the same regional layered crustal model and thus obtain site specific ground motion estimates these site specific synthetic seismograms have higher correlation to observations in comparison to the synthetic seismograms without weak motion site correction they have similar amplitude and frequency content to the observations especially at sites with recorded peak ground accelerations below 0 3 g at sites with larger ground motions however this approach overestimates the strong motion the differences are made clear when we estimate site response functions from the strong motion records and compare them with those from weak motion records we express the differences as the average ratio of the weak to strong motion site response aws ratio when the ground motion is low the aws ratio is near unity indicating that the weak and strong motion site responses agree with each other within the uncertainty however the aws ratio increases as the ground motion amplitude increses the difference in weak and strong motion site responses becomes significant at stations where peak acceleration was above 0 3 g peak velocity was above 20 cm sec or peak strain was above 0 06 during the mainshock this result demonstrates directly from the ground motion observations the relationship between nonlinear site response and peak ground motion parameters the nonlinearity is present on soft rock sites as well as on sediment sites

reply to leif wennerberg s comment on simultaneous study of the source path and site effects on strong ground motion during the 1989 loma prieta earthquake a preliminary result on pervasive nonlinear site effects

evolution of photoautotrophy and early atmospheric oxygen levels abstract current photochemical models suggest that oxygen levels in the prebiological atmosphere were extremely low most probably remaining in the range 10 8 10 14 pal present atmospheric level it is therefore reasonable to assume that only life processes were able to overwhelm these minor o2 pressures with free oxygen resulting from the reduction of carbon dioxide to the carbohydrate level during photoautotrophic carbon fixation using water as an electron donor 2 h 2 o co 2 rarr h ch 2 o h 2 o o 2 it is by now well established that reduced organic carbon is a common constituent of sedimentary rocks from the very start of the geological record 3 8 ga ago both direct assays and inferences derived from a carbon isotope mass balance suggest that the corg content of archaean sediments was not basically different from that of geologically younger rocks this poses the problem of the existence 3 5 ga ago of an oxidation equivalent of such a formidable ancient corg reservoir which depending on the model adopted for the growth of the sedimentary mass through time might have amounted to between 20 and 100 of the present one low atmospheric oxygen pressures in the early precambrian that are inferred from retarded oxidation reactions notably in the ancient continental weathering cycle are likely therefore to indicate extremely rapid processes of oxygen consumption in other parts of the system e g hydrosphere rather than the general absence of photosynthetic oxidation equivalents during this time

near surface attenuation and site effects from comparison of surface and deep borehole recordings abstract near surface attenuation and site effects are investigated using the seismograms of 17 local earthquakes recorded at depths of 0 0 3 1 5 2 5 and 2 9 km in the cajon pass borehole southern california the borehole penetrates 500 m of miocene sandstone and then crystalline granitic basement rock previous estimates of site response have been limited to shallower holes where the surface reflection interferes with the upgoing direct wave and the deepest sensor is not below the severe near surface effects in bedrock spectral ratios of the direct p and s waves for each earthquake between the different recording levels are well modeled with frequency independent q and amplification at the borehole q p 27 8 and q s 21 7 in the upper 2 9 km increasing from q p 26 and q s 15 in the upper 300 m to q p 133 and q s 47 between 1 5 and 3 km one event was also recorded at a surface granite site less than 1 5 km from the wellhead comparison of the 2 9 km recording with that at this granite site gives q p 50 and q s 23 the similarity of these values with those of previous studies at a wide range of sites suggests that q is very low in the near surface independent of rock type near surface amplification appears considerably more site dependent at the wellhead the amplifications at 1 hz of the direct p and s waves are 12 7 and 13 7 respectively these values include the free surface effect and are in reasonable agreement with the impedance contrast from the borehole logs at the granite site amplification of both p and s waves is less than four direct wave amplification at the wellhead is therefore at least three times that of the granite site the spectra of the direct and coda waves of the one earthquake recorded at both the wellhead and granite sites are compared with the corresponding 2 9 km recording coda wave amplification is in good agreement with the direct wave at the rock site but at the borehole the coda wave amplification factor overestimates the direct wave amplification by a factor of 3

evaluation of the effectiveness of theoretical 1d amplification factors for earthquake ground motion prediction we investigate the use of site factors derived from theoretical one dimensional ground response analyses as a means by which to estimate seismic site effects for earthquake ground motion prediction we review a set of theoretical site factors derived from equivalent linear analyses for specific geologic categories in the los angeles area and the san francisco bay area the theoretical site factors are a function of the peak horizontal acceleration for the reference rock site condition and the depth to firm material taken as depth to the 1 km sec shear wave isosurface we apply the site factors to predict the response spectral acceleration of ground motions at recording sites in a manner that mimics how they would typically be used in engineering practice empirical ground motion prediction equations are used to estimate a reference rock spectrum that is then modified by using the theoretical site factors analysis of residuals between the data and model predictions indicates that the theoretical site factors are able to capture the average effects of sediment nonlinearity the analyses also show that short period spectral accelerations are underpredicted and that long period spectral accelerations are overpredicted the underprediction at short periods may result from overestimation of a soft to firm reference rock correction factor that is needed to apply the site factors the overprediction bias at long periods varies with depth suggesting that the depth term in the site factors may not fully account for the effect of basin geometry at long periods

on the characteristics of local geology and their influence on ground motions generated by the loma prieta earthquake in the san francisco bay region california strong ground motions recorded at 34 sites in the san francisco bay region from the loma prieta earthquake show marked variations in characteristics dependent on crustal structure and local geological conditions peak horizontal acceleration and velocity inferred for sites underlain by rock generally occur on the transverse component of motion they are consistently greater with lower attenuation rates than the corresponding mean value predicted by empirical curves based on previous strong motion data theoretical amplitude distributions and synthetic seismograms calculated for 10 layer models suggest that bedrock motions were elevated due in part to the wide angle reflection of s energy from the base of a relatively thin 25 km continental crust in the region characteristics of geologic and geotechnical units as currently mapped for the san francisco bay region show that average ratios of peak horizontal acceleration velocity and displacement increase with decreasing mean shear wave velocity ratios of peak acceleration for sites on soil alluvium fill bay mud are statistically larger than those for sites on hard rock sandstone shale franciscan complex spectral ratios establish the existence of predominant site periods with peak amplifications near 15 for potentially damaging levels of ground motion at some sites underlain by alluvium and fill bay mud average spectral amplifications inferred for vertical and the mean horizontal motion are respectively 1 1 for sites on the franciscan complex kjf 1 4 1 5 for sites on mesozoic and tertiary rocks tmzs 2 1 2 0 for sites on the santa clara formation qts 2 3 2 9 for sites on alluvium qal and 2 1 4 0 for sites on fill bay mud qaf qhbm these mean values are not statistically different at the 5 significance level from those inferred from previous low strain data analyses suggest that soil amplification and reflected crustal shear energy were major contributors to levels of ground motion sufficient to cause damage to vulnerable structures at distances near 100 km in the cities of san francisco and oakland

site amplification from s wave coda in the long valley caldera region california following the work of phillips 1985 we have computed site amplification factors for coda waves at many sites in the long valley region in the eastern sierra nevada we computed ratios of coda amplitudes measured at 15 stations in and around long valley caldera relative to a granitic site mmpm for six frequency bands centered at 1 5 3 0 6 0 9 0 12 0 and 15 0 hz all station sites located within the caldera experienced large ground motion amplification at 1 5 and 3 0 hz ranging between five and 17 times that of the reference site however at higher frequencies these same sites exhibited significantly less amplification than the reference granite site this is attributed to the competing effects of an impedance contrast between the basement rock and caldera fill and very high absorption in the caldera fill at high frequencies station mmlm located on top of a volcanic plug displayed the largest amplitudes of all the sites studied for frequencies between 9 0 and 15 0 hz a dike structure attached to the plug couples the basement rock to the surface at high frequencies the resulting large amplitudes at mmlm are not due to amplification resulting from a strong impedance contrast rather the absorption under this site is very low perhaps lower than at the reference site mmpm outside the caldera another hard rock site located at devil s postpile mdpm generally behaved like the reference site for all frequencies the lowest amplifications observed came from a site outside the caldera mdcm located on thin pyroclastic ash deposits overlying granitic basement this can be attributed to a dominance of absorption over the amplification caused by lower impedance of this layer variations among sites on similar surface geology may be due to small local variations in impedance and absorption under and adjacent to the site the range in the spectral decay parameter between caldera and rock sites are comparable to results of anderson and hough 1984 for sites on alluvium and rock in the san fernando region these surprisingly different amplifications support the need for additional site specific studies amplifications determined in this study for the frequency range 1 5 and 3 0 hz correlate remarkably well with eaton s 1990 residuals for duration magnitude fmag and amplitude magnitude xmag for the usgs northern california seismic array further supporting the use of coda waves in determining site specific amplification

zircon geochronology of late archean komatiitic sills and their felsic country rocks south central zimbabwe a revised age for the reliance komatiitic event and its implications abstract the 2 8 2 6 ga bulawayan supergroup of the zimbabwe craton is inferred to be a passive margin and plume related conformable sequence comprising in part the felsic volcanic koodoovale sedimentary manjeri komatiitic reliance basaltic zeederbergs units the reliance unit is spatially associated with subjacent komatiitic sills of the mashaba ultramafic suite the inferred subvolcanic intrusive phase of the reliance flow fields we report u pb zircon ages for several units the pangani sill in the filabusi belt yielded an age of 2912 ma indicating it may belong to the 3 0 2 9 ga belingwean supergroup the koodoovale unit appears to range in age from 2866 to 2788 ma inferred syn eruptive mass flow deposits within the manjeri basinal shallow water sub facies in the midlands se belt yield ages of 2877 and 2870 ma sills of the mashaba ultramafic suite together with a previous result of 2743 ma for the mashaba igneous complex yield a mean age of 2746 ma which we propose as a proxy age for the reliance unit and for the reliance komatiitic event as a whole the 2 80 ga age for the top of the koodoovale unit in the western filabusi and gweru nw belts confirms with greater stratigraphic control earlier precise geochronology and provides an age for the start of sedimentation in the overlying manjeri basinal deep water sub facies the 2 79 ga felsic sample from within the reliance unit in the shangani n belt is likely from a koodoovale derived post eruptive mass flow deposit in the midlands se belt the new felsic rock ages support the conformable relationship between the uppermost koodoovale unit and overlying manjeri unit but place the transition at c 2 87 ga significantly earlier than in belts further west the new ages for the koodoovale unit and the revised age for the reliance unit introduce new perspectives on the development of the bulawayan supergroup 1 the koodoovale manjeri transition is diachronous across the zimbabwe craton 2 the duration of manjeri sedimentation varied from 50 ma to 120 ma in the basinal deep water and shallow water sub facies respectively to 80 ma in the platformal facies in the east where sedimentation is estimated to have begun at 2 83 ga such prolonged sedimentation is controversial but can be explained by extended periods of non deposition in the basinal deep water sub facies 3 using all published precise ages reliance zeederbergs volcanism may have lasted 70 ma 2 75 2 68 ga much longer than phanerozoic plume systems and 4 the previously proposed correlation and late archean nearest neighbour relationship between the zimbabwe and slave cratons are provided further support

first direct radiometric dating of archaean stromatolitic limestone here we report the first direct dating of the depositional age of a sedimentary carbonate rock using long lived radioactive decay schemes the mushandike stromatolitic limestone from the masvingo formerly fort victoria greenstone belt of southern zimbabwe1 2 yields a pb pb isochron age of 2 839 33 myr published claims3 for an age of 3 5 gyr for the mushandike limestone were based on its supposed intrusion by the mushandike granite for which a rb sr whole rock age of 3 445 260 myr had been reported4 new rb sr and pb pb isotope data for the mushandike granite indicate a probable emplacement age of 2 900 myr and new field evidence j l o p t j f w in preparation suggests that the granite forms part of the basement on which the limestone was deposited thus the new dates do not support an age of 3 5 gyr for the algal stromatolites at mushandike the pb pb isochron method may have wide applicability to dating the time of deposition of precambrian fossiliferous and unfossiliferous limestones and thus to the problem of the antiquity of life

seismic moments local magnitudes and coda duration magnitudes for earthquakes in central california onscale seismograms recorded at stations in the u s geological survey s usgs central california seismic network calnet have been used to estimate the seismic moment m and local magnitude ml for earthquakes of 1 ml 4 located on the san juan bautista and parkfield sections of the san andreas fault the coyote lake section of the calaveras fault the sargent fault and near livermore these data together with m and ml estimates for 4 ml 6 earthquakes in these areas cannot be fit with a single linear log m versus ml relation rather the data are consistent with log m 1 5 ml 16 for 3 ml 6 with log m 1 2 ml 17 for 1 1 2 ml 3 1 2 and with a slope of to 1 fro 1 2 ml 1 1 2 whereas usgs coda duration magnitude md is consistent with ml for 1 1 2 ml 3 md is larger than ml at ml 1 1 2 and smaller than ml at ml 3 log m can be estimated to a precision of 0 2 for 1 md 3 1 2 earthquakes in central california by applying log m 1 2 md 17 to the md that have been routinely published by the usgs

local site effects on weak and strong ground motion abstract this is a review of the current state of the art in characterizing effects of local geology on ground motion a new horizon is clear in this aspect of strong motion studies non linear amplification at sediment sites appears to be more pervasive than seismologists used to think several recent observations about the weak motion and the strong motion suggest that the non linear amplification at sediment sites may be very common first on average the amplification is always greater at the younger sediment sites for all frequencies up to 12 hz in the case of weak motion while the relation is reversed for frequencies higher than 5 hz in the case of strong motion secondly the application of the amplification factor determined from weak motion overestimates significantly the strong motion at sediment sites observed during the loma prieta earthquake within the epicentral distance of about 50 km thirdly the variance of peak ground acceleration around the mean curve decreases with the increasing earthquake magnitude finally the above non linear effects are expected from geotechnical studies both in the magnitude of departure from the linear prediction and in the threshold acceleration level beyond which the non linearity begins

source parameters of loma prieta aftershocks and wave propagation characteristics along the san francisco peninsula from a joint inversion of digital seismograms abstract aftershock recordings from 10 digital seismographs deployed along the axis of the san francisco peninsula from the epicenter of the 18 october 1989 loma prieta earthquake to san francisco provide the data for a joint inversion for source wave propagation and site effects the inversion procedure is a least squares method using the singular value decomposition algorithm and is done in two parts the first solves only for the source and attenuation terms for all events and the second projects the residuals from the first inversion onto the site terms the coefficient of geometrical spreading is solved for as part of the model of attenuation residuals plotted versus distance and frequency provide a check on the appropriateness of the attenuation model the earthquakes are all located near the san andreas fault mostly in the aftershock zone of the loma prieta mainshock but some area near daly city on the peninsula the data set provided by geos recorders consists of 148 digital seismograms for 33 events from 10 sites that form a linear profile from the epicentral region to the city of san francisco a distance of approximately 100 km strong motion accelerograms are also available for the larger events body wave spectra are fit surprisingly well by our model especially at distances beyond about 20 km where differences due to radiation pattern effects and changes in angle of incidence become less important results from the inversion show that estimates of moment are only 1 higher for the p waves compared to the s waves apparently there are no major biases in the estimates as each is determined independently of the other p wave corner frequencies are 1 5 times higher than s wave corner frequencies on average stress drops with an average of 176 bars for events that range in magnitude from 1 7 to 4 2 are higher than those found in previous studies where site and path were not explicitly taken into account the exponents of geometrical spreading are very close to one 1 019 for p waves and 1 017 for s waves for this data set which extends to about 100 km the whole path q assumed to be frequency independent was about 800 for both p and s waves specifically 790 for p waves and 830 for s waves the average p wave attenuation at all sites is quantified by a t of 0 020 sec which compares to 0 03 sec for s waves t determined for each site range from a low of 0 008 sec at san bruno mountain a hard rock site to a high of 0 065 sec at corralitos in the epicentral area residuals of the model fits which are distance dependent show larger amplitudes near the epicenter but fall off with a minimum at about 30 km where amplitudes are about 30 to 60 lower than average at distances farther than 30 km amplitudes rise out to the limit of the data at about 105 km where amplitudes are about average at frequencies less than 10 hz but are slightly above average for higher frequencies the location of this low in amplitude can be explained as the boundary between the amplitude decay of direct arrivals and the emergence of wide angle reflections from the lower crust and moho which increase in amplitude beyond 30 km these amplitudes correlate with damage patterns from the mainshock as less damage was observed along the peninsula but appeared to increase towards san francisco even when damage in the marina and china basin districts of san francisco are not included in the damage census

dense array recordings in the san bernardino valley of landers big bear aftershocks basin surface waves moho reflections and three dimensional simulations abstract fourteen geos seismic recorders were deployed in the san bernardino valley to study the propagation of short period t 1 to 3 sec surface waves and moho reflections three dense arrays were used to determine the direction and speed of propagation of arrivals in the seismograms the seismograms for a shallow d 1 km m 4 9 aftershock of the big bear earthquake exhibit a very long duration 60 sec of sustained shaking at periods of about 2 sec array analysis indicates that these late arrivals are dominated by surface waves traveling in various directions across the valley some energy is arriving from a direction 180 from the epicenter and was apparently reflected from the edge of the valley opposite the source a close in aftershock 25 km depth 7 km displays substantial short period surface waves at deep soil sites a three dimensional 3d finite difference simulation produces synthetic seismograms with durations similar to those of the observed records for this event indicating the importance of s wave to surface wave conversion near the edge of the basin flat layered models severely underpredict the duration and spectral amplification of this deep soil site i show an example where the coda wave amplitude ratio at 1 to 2 hz between a deep soil and a rock site does not equal the s wave amplitude ratio because of the presence of surface waves in the coda of the deep soil site for one of the events studied 90 km there are sizable phases that are critically reflected from the moho pmp and sms at one of the rock sites the sms phase has a more peaked spectrum that the direct s wave

a comparison of coda and s wave spectral ratios as estimates of site response in the southern san francisco bay area abstract we calculate spectral ratios for s waves and codas to evaluate the amplification of 14 sites in the southern san francisco bay area relative to a nearby bedrock site in the coyote hills our data are seismograms written by loma prieta aftershocks the epicentral distances and azimuths to the stations are effectively the same all the sites in the study are amplified with respect to the reference site at frequencies from 0 5 to 7 hz the shapes of the s wave and coda spectral ratios are similar but the coda ratios are greater than the s wave ratios by as much as a factor of 4 the difference is larger for sites on alluvial and bay mud deposits particularly at frequencies around 1 hz suggesting the presence of waves trapped in the alluvial basin in general the length of the analysis window affects the s wave spectral ratios for alluvial sites longer windows give ratios similar to coda ratios apparently because these windows include more of the phases that contribute to the coda we classify the sites according to their geological characteristics and surficial shear wave velocities for the s wave ratios the differences between the classes showed no systematic trend the softest and hardest soil classes we consider have practically identical s wave amplifications the average coda ratios for the site classes clearly increase as the soil classes include slower and softer materials after correction for differences in reference sites the coda amplifications are very similar to the relative amplifications for these site classes estimated by borcherdt and glassmoyer 1992 from the strong motion recordings of the 1989 loma prieta earthquake

petrography and stable isotope ratios from archaean stromatolites mushandike formation zimbabwe abstract the mushandike sanctuary near masvingo fort victoria zimbabwe contains well preserved but metamorphosed stromatolitic limestones of archaean age despite the metamorphism textural preservation is excellent to a scale as fine as c 100 200 cores recovered from the stromatolites have 18 o 15 pdb approximately and 13c 0 0 to 0 5 pdb in less weathered samples the results are consistent with a metamorphic history involving volatile loss at 200 c or less from an original source rock which may have been isotopically similar to the cheshire stromatolites belingwe

simultaneous study of the source path and site effects on strong ground motion during the 1989 loma prieta earthquake a preliminary result on pervasive nonlinear site effects we considered the effects of source propagation path and local site conditions on strong ground motion from the loma prieta earthquake in the following steps first the local site effect was removed from the strong motion records applying the weak motion amplification factors estimated from nearby stations of usgs regional network using the coda method then we confirmed the approximate validity of the 1 r law of geometrical spreading factor for the crustal model applicable to the region and we determined the attenuation parameter q f and source spectrum s f empirically from the site effect corrected spectral amplitude both q f and s f are consistent with the results obtained earlier for major california earthquakes we then synthesized the time history of ground acceleration by applying the stochastic simulation technique the agreement between the observed and predicted records was good for duration and spectral content we found however a strong systematic discrepancy with regard to peak acceleration namely for distances less than 50 km the predicted peak acceleration consistently overestimated the observed for sediment sites and underestimated it for the franciscan formation sites since the above systematic discrepancy applies to all the available stations within about 50 km from the hypocenter it is unlikely that the effect is due to the radiation pattern near source structure or topography it appears that the strong difference in the amplification factor between the franciscan and the sediment sites observed for weak motion disappears at acceleration levels higher than about 0 1 to 0 3 g if this is due to the nonlinear response of the sediment sites it is in the range expected from geotechnical engineering studies

site amplification of coda waves from local earthquakes in central california the goals of this study are two fold 1 to examine the site effect of coda waves believed to be the average site effect of shear waves in order to understand its spatial and frequency dependent behavior and 2 to learn what we can about the processes that generate the coda itself we use digital data from over 90 earthquakes each recorded by a subset of some 150 stations in the coast ranges of central california between san francisco and san luis obispo results from the band 1 5 to 24 hz indicate that site amplification depends strongly on surface geology and frequency at low frequencies 1 5 to 3 0 hz changes in amplification up to a factor of 20 are observed amplification generally varies inversely with deposit age at sediment sites and is lowest at granite and franciscan basement sites at high frequencies 6 to 24 hz the pattern changes many granite sites the majority in the gabilan range exhibit increasing amplification with frequency relative to the average station this behavior differs strikingly from that observed at sediment and franciscan sites which roll off at an intermediate rate and many sediment sites adjacent to the san andreas fault zone which decay away even more rapidly with frequency these results can be explained qualitatively by appealing to variable near site impedance and attenuation however complicating phenomena such as mode excitation in valley sediments must exist at low frequencies peaked behavior at a few hard rock sites at high frequency 12 hz currently lacks explanation at a few sediment sites the low frequency excitation is so strong that the coda envelopes begin to take on different shapes this contradicts the assumption based on previous observations that the coda shape is independent of source receiver location thus some site measurements may be artificially high the working model of coda waves as body wave energy backscattered from randomly distributed inhomogeneities must be modified to include the possibility of efficient near site resonance excited by incident direct and coda wave energy

empirical green s function analysis of loma prieta aftershocks abstract following the 18 october 1989 loma prieta earthquake an array of 22 three component iris passcal instruments was deployed in the santa cruz mountains we use an empirical green9s function method to study source properties of aftershocks as well as attenuation in the epicentral area using pairs of closely spaced events we show that the largest aftershocks are well modelled by an 2 source spectrum and we obtain estimates of the p wave corner frequency for a total of 15 events brune stress drops are observed to have no systematic variation over the range of moments spanned by the data set down to 10 19 dyne cm there is a suggestion that aftershocks that occurred outside the mainshock rupture have higher stress drops than those that occurred within the mainshock rupture a m l 3 4 foreshock in the subsequence associated with the 18 april 1990 m l 5 4 watsonville earthquake yields a stress drop estimate of 820 bars this value is well outside the stress drops obtained for all other events 6 to 266 bars site specific attenuation parameters suggest large lateral and vertical heterogeneity in p wave q structure station holy in a valley near the surface trace of the san andreas fault is characterized by low q values while stations to the north of the aftershock zone are characterized by the highest q values

comment on simultaneous study of the source path and site effects on strong ground motion during the 1989 loma prieta earthquake a preliminary result on pervasive nonlinear site effects by byau heng chin and keiiti aki

zircon geochronology of archaean felsic sequences in the zimbabwe craton a revision of greenstone stratigraphy and a model for crustal growth u pb ion microprobe shrimp work on zircon populations from 13 zimbabwean archaean felsic rocks are presented and interpreted samples were extracted from felsic volcanic sequences from most of the major greenstone belts and represent the first zircon geochronological data from within the greenstone belts themselves the data demonstrate a late archaean volcanicity spanning 250 ma which began at least 2900 ma ago and ended at 2650 ma the intrusion of extensive granitoid sills of the chilimanzi suite at c 2 6 ga marks the widespread stabilization of the craton based on the new zircon data and a re evaluation of published mapping a new stratigraphic subdivision is presented for the late 3 3 ga fragment of archaean crust in zimbabwe these data suggest that the early archaean crust is restricted to the tokwe segment in the south of the country since even the oldest of the felsic volcanics 2 90 ga lower belingwean have zircons which are 50 ma older it is suggested that remnants of earlier cyclic greenstone granitoid events must underlie the present craton and that all of the currently exposed greenstone belts of zimbabwe were developed on sialic crust

accounting for site effects in probabilistic seismic hazard analyses of southern california overview of the scec phase iii report this article presents an overview of the southern california earthquake center scec phase iii effort to determine the extent to which probabilistic seismic hazard analysis psha can be improved by accounting for site effects the contri butions made in this endeavor are represented in the various articles that compose this special issue of bssa given the somewhat arbitrary nature of the site effect distinction it must be care fully defined in any given context with respect to psha we define the site effect as the response relative to an attenuation relationship averaged over all damaging earthquakes in the region a diligent effort has been made to identify any attributes that predispose a site to greater or lower levels of shaking the most detailed maps of quaternary geology are not found to be helpful either they are overly detailed in terms of distinguishing different amplification factors or present southern california strong motion observations are inadequate to reveal their superiority a map based on the average shear wave velocity in the upper 30 m however is found to delineate significantly different amplification factors a correlation of amplification with basin depth is also found to be significant implying up to a factor of two difference between the shallowest and deepest parts of the los angeles basin in fact for peak accel eration the basin depth correction is more influential than the 30 m shear wave ve locity questions remain however as to whether basin depth is a proxy for some other site attribute in spite of these significant and important site effects the standard deviation of an attenuation relationship the prediction error is not significantly reduced by making such corrections that is given the influence of basin edge induced waves subsur face focusing and scattering in general any model that attempts to predict ground motion with only a few parameters will have a substantial intrinsic variability our best hope for reducing such uncertainties is via waveform modeling based on first principals of physics finally questions remain with respect to the overall reliability of attenuation re lationships at large magnitudes and short distances current discrepancies between viable models produce up to a factor of 3 difference among predicted 10 in 50 yr exceedance levels part of which results from the uncertain influence of sediment nonlinearity

tectonic cycles in southern africa abstract the recurrence of major geological events within the 3600 ma stratigraphic record of southern africa suggests a periodicity of320 25ma for at least the last 3200 ma this periodicity is reflected in major episodes of continental volcanism granitoid plutonism orogeny reciprocity of terrestrial and marine dominated sequences platform carbonate sedimentation glaciation and first order changes in sea level these serve to define 11 completed megacycles each introduced by a major rifting event accompanied by listric faulting alluvial sedimentation in restricted fault bound troughs volcanism and a type granitoid plutonism prior to 3200 ma continental rift magmatism occurred subaqueously due to very high early archean sea levels resulting in pillow lavas and a lack of interbedded terrigenous siliciclastics the long term reciprocity of terrestrial and marine dominated sequences records eustatic first order changes in sea level with highstands characterized by generally humid warm continental climates low relief and tropical afforestation on the other hand lowstand climates were hot and arid with high relief and widespread desertification thick marine sequences accumulate in areally extensive epeirogenic basins without significant volcanism or faulting and commonly are divided into an early phase of open shelf sedimentation followed by deposition in a brackish marine foreland basin within openshelf environments an early phase of biochemical precipitation and or siliciclastic reworking along linear shorelines is separated from a later phase involving rapid deposition of immature siliciclastics along lobate shorelines evolution of the foreland basin is related to orogenic activity and the isolation of an epeiric sea which sometimes developed the characters of a barred basin marine dominated sequences display a deterministic stacking of lithofacies important glacial epochs commonly occur midway through first order regression sometimes with lesser events closely following peak transgression potentially they display 320 ma periodicity but with an unexplained mid proterozoic gap glaciation is related to the combined effect of climatic cooling associated with first order regression and depletion of atmospheric co2 by biological uptake associated with platform carbonate development terrestrial volcanism is believed to be the main contributor of atmospheric co2 climatic change is accompanied by cyclical patterns of cratonic weathering and pedogenesis

site amplification and attenuation via downhole array seismogram inversion a comparative study of the 2003 miyagi oki aftershock sequence weak motion geotechnical array recordings at 38 stations of the japanese strong motion network kik net from the 2003 m w 7 0 miyagi oki aftershock sequence are used here to quantify the amplification and attenuation effects of near surface formations to incident seismic motion initially a seismic waveform optimization algorithm is implemented for the evaluation of high resolution low strain velocity v s attenuation q s and density profiles at the sites of interest based on the inversion results v s versus q s correlations are developed and scattering versus intrinsic attenuation effects are accounted for in their physical interpretation surface to downhole traditional spectral ratios ssr cross spectral ratios c ssr and horizontal to vertical h v site response estimates are next evaluated and compared while their effectiveness is assessed as a function of the site conditions classified on the basis of the weighted average vs of the upper 30 m v s30 of the formations single and reference station site response estimates are successively compared to surface to rock outcrop amplification spectra and are evaluated by deconvolution of the downhole records based on the inversion results comparison of the observed ssr and estimated surface to rock outcrop amplification spectra illustrates the effects of destructive interference of downgoing waves at the downhole instrument level as a function of the site class site amplification factors are successively computed in reference to the national earthquake hazards reduction program nehrp b c boundary site conditions v s30 760 m sec and results are compared to published values developed on the basis of strong motion data and site response analyses finally weak motion ssr estimates are compared to the mainshock spectra and conclusions are drawn for the implications of soil nonlinearity in the near surface results presented in this article suggest that currently employed site classification criteria need to be reevaluated to ensure intraclass consistency in the assessment of amplification potentials and nonlinearity susceptibility of near surficial soil formations

complexities in high frequency seismic waveforms due to three dimensional structure in the new madrid seismic zone effects of three dimensional structure on 2 to 10 hz seismic signals in the new madrid seismic zone nmsz are investigated using waveforms from similar microearthquakes that occurred near ridgely tennessee slowness power spectral sps analysis is used to study the plane wave composition of p s and coda waves the observed sps at four stations suggest that the early s coda is composed mainly of wavelets leaving the source with slownesses of the direct s wave at greater lapse times coda is increasingly affected by random scattering sps observed on the vertical components and or near the s wave nodes are more comlplex due to practical limitations of the algorithm p coda and early s coda at a fifth station located southwest of the junction show the most complex sps analysis of that complexity together with waveform synthetics and travel time analysis strongly suggests that scattering multipathing due to source zone velocity heterogeneities occurs near the path probably due to dilatancy occurring southwest of the ridgely junction or due to internal fault zone complexities coda q when averaged over three components show no station variations we infer that 1 coda at 1 hz is mainly caused by scattering in the sedimentary layer where q is frequency independent 2 at higher frequencies the coda contains an increasing amount of scattered body waves and 3 the source radiation pattern and path variable scattering multipathing effects in early coda do not affect coda q

microfossils from the neoarchean campbell group griqualand west sequence of the transvaal supergroup and their paleoenvironmental and evolutionary implications the oldest filament and colonial coccoid containing microbial fossil assemblage now known is described here from drill core samples of stromatolitic cherty limestones of the neoarchean approximately 2600 ma old campbell group ghaap plateau dolomite lime acres member obtained at lime acres northern cape province south africa the assemblage is biologically diverse including entophysalidacean eoentophysalis sp probable chroococcacean unnamed colonial coccoids and oscillatoriacean cyanobacteria eomycetopsis cf filiformis and siphonophycus transvaalensis as well as filamentous fossil bacteria archaeotrichion sp filamentous possible microfossils unnamed hematitic filaments also occur the campbell group microorganisms contributed to the formation of stratiform and domical to columnar stromatolitic reefs in shallow subtidal to intertidal environments of the transvaal intracratonic sea although only moderately to poorly preserved they provide new evidence regarding the paleoenvironmental setting of the campbell group sediments extend the known time range of entophysalidacean cyanobacteria by more than 400 million years substantiate the antiquity and role in stromatolite formation of archean oscillatoriacean cyanobacteria and document the exceedingly slow hypobradytelic evolutionary rate characteristic of this early evolving prokaryotic lineage

source parameters of small earthquakes recorded at 2 5 km depth cajon pass southern california implications for earthquake scaling a 2 5 km deep triaxial seismometer at cajon pass in southern california has recorded several hundred earthquakes ml4 0 occurring within the san andreas fault system at 2 5 km seismic background noise is below amplifier sensitivity and the 2 250 hz spectral range of recorded seismic motion is wider and higher than that of most natural event catalogs compared with downhole recorded motion seismic amplitudes at the surface are amplified below 10 hz and severely attenuated above 30 hz we estimate that qs is at least 1000 for wave motion at 2 5 km and below and qp is over 2000 the range of source dimensions in the downhole recorded catalog is 10 m to 70 m ml 2 0 mo 108 nm to ml 2 7 mo 1013 nm the plot of log source radius vs log moment has a straight line trend compatible with earthquake scaling at constant stress drop inferred stress drops are scattered between 1 and 500 bars there is no evidence in the catalog for the proposed minimum source dimension at 100 m when the cajon pass borehole catalog containing some of the smallest recorded natural earthquakes is combined with 800 larger events from previous studies the moment radius trend suggests that natural earthquakes are self similar over a magnitude range m 2 to 8 we suggest that inferences of minimum source dimension are more likely due to bias in bandlimited individual catalogs than to properties of the seismic crust

seismic site amplification factors in campi flegrei southern italy the method of spectral ratios of s waves from local small earthquakes recorded at various sites in the campi flegrei volcanic area southern italy has been used to evaluate the seismic site response in the frequency range 1 15 hz the spectra of the s wave trains recorded at the short period seismic stations are corrected for attenuation using attenuation parameters quality factor q previously determined for the area using the coda method a reference station has been used selected on the basis of the highest number of recorded earthquakes and not on geological considerations the relative uniformity of the geological conditions and the absence of hard rock sites conditioned such choice the method has been checked using the coda wave method to estimate the spectral site response and similar results were obtained the results show a relative peak of the spectral ratio pattern centred at low frequency 2 3 hz and a minimum of 0 2 at 8 hz for two stations located on yellow tuff such results are interpreted as being caused by a filtering effect produced by selective attenuation such a pattern could be of interest for seismic engineering purposes in view of the abundance of tuff over a wide area in this densely inhabited region

steep rock lake sedimentology and geochemistry of an archean carbonate platform abstract the 2800 ma mosher carbonate formation at steep rock lake in south central canada is one of earth s oldest limestone deposits it is both thick up to 500 m and relatively well preserved and was one of the first precambrian successions to be noted for evidence of early life it continues to provide information on the antiquity of such processes as photosynthesis the carbonate contains a variety of fabrics and facies from apparently fine grained bedded limestones with domal and columnar stromatolites atikokania radial fans and sheet cracks to closely packed metric scale hybrid domes of originally aragonite seafloor crust interlayered with fenestral fabric here we review previous work provide new observations concerning these sediments and their geochemistry and discuss the inception overall development and ultimate demise of the steep rock platform we divide the mosher carbonate into the lower hogarth member and upper elbow point member these units constitute a shallow water carbonate platform succession the hogarth member overlies eroded 3000 ma tonalite and is at least 120 m thick thin horizons of domal pseudocolumnar columnar and fenestral stratiform stromatolites and occasional layers of atikokania radial crystal fans occur within relatively fine grained thin bedded limestone with iron carbonate horizons in the upper part meter scale domes occur locally with sheet cracks and stromatactis the irregular laminae that build the small domal and columnar stromatolites are interpreted to be lithified mats and biofilms presumably cyanobacteria dominated fine grained well bedded facies of the lower hogarth member and its varied association of small stromatolites is interpreted to have accumulated in a relatively protected inner platform environment numerous very thin horizons of iron carbonate in the lower and upper parts of the hogarth member suggest temporally limited influence of iron rich offshore waters vertical trends in fe mn ba sr ce and 13 c probably reflect progressive restriction of circulation with at least one abrupt but short lived change back to more open seawater conditions the upper hogarth member with large banded domes and fenestral crusts and stromatolites is interpreted as back margin facies the overlying elbow point member is at least 70 m thick and appears to be entirely composed of innumerable juxtaposed elongate smooth and thickly layered domes lacking intervening sediment each dome is typically several meters across and composed of centimetric alternations of cuspate fenestral fabric possibly microbial and crystal fan fabric that is probably abiotic seafloor aragonite precipitate adjacent cuspate fenestral and crystal fan fabric show significant differences in concentration of 13 c sr ba fe and mn this giant dome facies is interpreted as a platform margin deposit in which alternating calcite aragonite mineralogies within each dome reflect a laterally fluctuating offshore redox boundary negative ce anomalies positive gd anomalies and reduced positive eu anomalies relative to laterally correlative deep water iron formation occur in the majority of crystal fan samples and in some cuspate fenestral fabric samples ca carbonate precipitation at the margin of an anoxic iron rich sea would have been promoted by oxygenic removal of iron from seawater otherwise fe carbonate would have been favored over ca carbonate precipitation the mosher carbonate formation is interpreted as an early marine oxygen oasis a shallow platform that favored cyanobacterial productivity was sufficiently isolated from open marine circulation for the seawater to become relatively oxygenated and where carbonate sediment aggradation was a positive feedback that sustained these shallow water conditions limestone accumulation terminated as transgressive suboxic and anoxic seawater deposited first manganese oxide rich and then manganese oxide poor iron formation sediments

joint modeling of lithosphere and mantle dynamics elucidating lithosphere mantle coupling 1 we provide new insights into the lithosphere mantle coupling problem through a joint modeling of lithosphere dynamics and mantle convection and through comparison of model results with the high resolution velocity gradient tensor model along the earth s plate boundary zones using a laterally variable effective viscosity lithosphere model we compute depth integrated deviatoric stresses associated with both gravitational potential energy gpe differences and deeper mantle density buoyancy driven convection when deviatoric stresses from horizontal basal tractions associated with deeper density buoyancy driven convective circulation of the mantle are added to those from gpe differences the fit between the model deviatoric stress field and the deformation indicators improves dramatically in most areas of continental deformation we find that the stresses induced by the horizontal tractions arising from deep mantle convection contribute approximately 50 of the magnitude of the earth s deviatoric lithospheric stress field we also demonstrate that lithosphere asthenosphere viscosity contrasts and lateral variations within the lithospheric plate boundary zones play an important role in generating the right direction and magnitude of tractions that yield an optimal match between deviatoric stress tensor patterns and the deformation indicators

site response for urban los angeles using aftershocks of the northridge earthquake ground motion records from aftershocks of the 1994 northridge earthquake are used to estimate site response in the urban los angeles area over 1300 shear wave records from 61 sources and 90 sites are used in a linear inversion for source and site response spectra the methodology makes no assumptions about the shape of the source spectrum to obtain a stable unique inverse a q model and geometrical spreading factor are assumed in addition the site response at a hard rock site is constrained to be approximately 1 0 with a kappa of 0 02 the site response spectra compare favorably with the results of previous and on going investigations in los angeles a couple of first order effects are lower site response in the surrounding mountains dominated by mesozoic and tertiary rocks and higher values in the san fernando and los angeles basins containing surficial pleistocene and holocene alluvial deposits results show good correlation of high site response spectral values with localized areas of severe damage interstate 10 collapse sherman oaks northridge interstate 5 14 collapse however widespread trends in site response across the sedimentary basins are not obvious the data suggest that site responses are lower near the southern margin of the san fernando valley for sources to the north due to north dipping sedimentary structures but the general pattern of site response is characterized by high variability on length scales less than a kilometer variations of a factor of 2 in site response are observed over the length scale of 200 m and for the same surficial geologic unit for some of the alluvial basin sites surface wave generation is a significant contributor to elevated site response at lower frequencies below 2 hz the total damage pattern for the northridge earthquake is influenced by strong source directivity to the north and strong local site effects the correlation of weak motion site response estimates with areas of significant damage demonstrates the value of these field measurements in future urban planning and in the reduction of seismic risk in urban areas

a general inversion scheme for source site and propagation characteristics using multiply recorded sets of moderate sized earthquakes abstract we derive an inversion scheme that fits the logarithms of seismic body wave spectra to 2 source shapes conditioned by anelastic attenuation with a frequency independent q the residuals from this fit are then projected onto the set of sources and sites with the source terms damped to estimate residual source spectra and site response spectra this two part inversion process is iterated until the square of the residuals summed over frequency for all recordings is minimized the absolute amplitudes of the source and site spectra are determined by fitting the site response spectra to estimates of the site amplification derived from geotechnical data we apply this inversion process to three sets of recordings of loma prieta aftershocks the first data set contains s waves recorded both in the marina district and at nearby hard rock stations we constrain the site response using the s wave velocity measured in a nearby borehole the absolute site amplifications for the marina stations are 15 to 20 at 1 hz and 10 at 2 5 hz the other two data sets comprise the p and s wave recordings from 28 aftershocks ranging in size from m d 2 1 to 4 6 obtained at accelerograph sites near the epicentral area the p and s wave attenuations determined from the inversions are q 414 and 380 while the average near site attenuations are t 0 012 and 0 026 sec respectively the average ratio of the s to p wave seismic moments is 1 1 0 1 the ratio of the p to s wave corner frequencies is 1 24 0 11 and the ratio of s to p wave radiated energy is 13 9 3 2 the brune stress drops for these aftershocks range from 8 to 800 bars the largest earthquakes exhibit the largest stress drops but there is no apparent dependence of stress drop on seismic moment for earthquakes with 10 19 m 0 21 dyne cm

a site effect study in acapulco guerrero mexico comparison of results from strong motion and microtremor data abstract the city of acapulco is located near or above the mature seismic gap of guerrero along the mexican subduction zone with the purpose of studying the character of strong ground motion on soft sites four digital accelerographs have been installed in the city on such sites these instruments have been in operation since 1988 two additional instruments part of the guerrero accelerograph array are located on hard sites in the area one of these vnta has been in operation since 1985 and the other acan since 1989 these stations have recorded several earthquakes we use data from eight events 4 2 m 6 9 to study spectral amplification of seismic waves at the soft sites with respect to vnta the s waves are amplified by a factor of 6 to 25 at the soft sites in a fairly broad range of frequencies both the amplification and the frequency band over which it occurs depend upon the site although the largest earthquake in our data set m 6 9 gave rise to a peak horizontal acceleration exceeding 0 3 g at one of the soft sites no clear evidence of nonlinear behavior of the subsoil is found spectral amplifications of s wave coda are very similar to those of s waves we also measured microtremors at the strong motion sites the microtremor spectra were interpreted using reasonable assumptions to test the feasibility of this technique in reproducing the spectral amplifications observed during earthquakes our results show that only a rough estimate of site response can be obtained from this technique at least in acapulco caution is warranted in its use elsewhere

the bulawayan supergroup a late archaean passive margin related large igneous province in the zimbabwe craton the four principal lithostratigraphic units koodoovale manjeri reliance and zeederbergs of the widespread late archaean bulawayan supergroup in the zimbabwe craton record the early to middle stage development of a major c 250 000 km 2 volcanosedimentary basin the craton wide c 2 70 ga manjeri unit varies systematically from a tens of metres thick dominantly chemogenic basinal sediment in gradational conformable contact with the underlying several kilometres thick diachronous 2 83 2 71 ga felsic koodoovale unit in the north and west to an up to hundreds of metres thick dominantly siliciclastic retrogradational platformal sediment unconformably overlying protocratonic basement in the south and east the intermittent c 2 70 ga reliance unit consists of the flow fields of several discrete komatiitic sill flow complexes scattered throughout the craton and fed by an interlinked system of mid to upper crustal flow through feeder sills the c 2 70 ga zeederbergs unit comprises a submarine flood basalt sequence of several kilometres thickness that erupted from ene trending parallel mafic dykes preserved in the south and east the basalts form a craton wide blanket to the reliance flow fields and intervening manjeri sediments certain structural stratigraphic features rule out primary construction of the bulawayan supergroup by early lateral accretion as proposed by several previous workers instead evolution of the bulawayan basin can best be explained by vertical accretion involving 1 abundant episodic and bimodal plume related volcanism and 2 extension and rapid subsidence of continental lithosphere many aspects of the bulawayan supergroup provide important insights into archaean tectonics mantle plume activity magma generation and lithospheric plumbing

scattered surface wave energy in the seismic coda one of the many important contributions that aki has made to seismology pertains to the origin of coda waves aki 1969 aki and chouet 1975 in this paper i revisit aki s original idea of the role of scattered surface waves in the seismic coda based on the radiative transfer theory i developed a new set of scattered wave energy equations by including scattered surface waves and body wave to surface wave scattering conversions the work is an extended study of zeng et al 1991 zeng 1993 and sato 1994a on multiple isotropic scattering and may shed new insight into the seismic coda wave interpretation the scattering equations are solved numerically by first discretizing the model at regular grids and then solving the linear integral equations iteratively the results show that scattered wave energy can be well approximated by body wave to body wave scattering at earlier arrival times and short distances at long distances from the source scattered surface waves dominate scattered body waves at surface stations since surface waves are 2 d propagating waves their scattered energies should in theory follow a common decay curve the observed common decay trends on seismic coda of local earthquake recordings particular at long lapse times suggest that perhaps later seismic codas are dominated by scattered surface waves when efficient body wave to surface wave conversion mechanisms are present in the shallow crustal layers such as soft sediment layers the scattered surface waves dominate the seismic coda at even early arrival times for shallow sources and at later arrival times for deeper events

microtremor survey in talchir india to ascertain its basin characteristics in terms of predominant frequency by nakamura s ratio technique abstract the talchir basin one of india s oldest basins has been a subject of interest because of its rich coal deposits the maximum thickness of the basin is about 1500 m beyond the basin is the hard metamorphic rocks of precambrian age the ambient noise survey data have been analyzed for the talchir basin using nakamura s technique of horizontal vertical spectral ratio hvsr to ascertain the basin structure in terms of the predominant frequency the predominant frequency varies from 0 25 hz to 7 8 hz but a major portion of the basin comes under the range of 0 3 hz 2 4 hz while on the metamorphic rocks it is as high as 7 8 hz the variation in predominant frequency shows a good correlation with the sediment thickness of the basin the results have been compared with the previous studies by other researchers and it shows consistency with the northerly dip of the basin the present study has also been compared with the results of the synthetic seismogram that was performed for the talchir basin the predominant frequency obtained from hvsr technique complements well with the frequency at which the peak response spectra ratio is observed the present study of the predominant frequency identifies quite well the characteristics of talchir basin and is in good agreement with the synthetic ground motion modeling of the region

a three dimensional simulation of seismic waves in the santa clara valley california from a loma prieta aftershock abstract the finite difference method is used to propagate elastic waves through a 3 d model of the santa clara valley an alluvium filled basin that underlies the city of san jose california the model was based on depth to bedrock information from water wells in the area the simulation corresponded to a region 30 east west by 22 north south by 6 depth km and contained about 4 million grid points synthetic seismograms from the simulation are accurate at frequencies up to 1 hz motions from a magnitude 4 4 aftershock of the loma prieta earthquake were modeled snapshots of ground motion and synthetic seismograms from the simulation are presented the simulation illustrates s to surface wave conversion at the edges of the basin and the large amplitude and long duration of ground motion in the basin compared to the surrounding rock love waves produced at the edge of the basin are the largest arrivals in the transverse synthetics because of the slow group velocity of the love waves sites near the center of the basin have longer durations of significant motions than basin sites near the valley edges sites near the center of the basin also show larger peak amplitudes on the transverse component array analysis of the synthetic seismograms indicates that love waves tend to propagate parallel to the eastern and western edges of the valley rayleigh waves are produced along the southern margin of the basin from incident s waves large radial motions occur where a rayleigh wave impinges on the northeast margin of the valley some rayleigh waves travel westward across the basin after being scattered from the eastern edge of the valley synthetic seismograms from the simulation have similar peak amplitudes as seismograms recorded by the sunnyvale dense array for this aftershock although the duration of the tranverse component is not matched by the synthetic seismogram using this basin model the simulation indicates that the love waves observed on the actual seismograms were produced by conversion of incident s waves at the southern margin of the santa clara valley 2 d simulations show how the s to love wave conversion is affected by the angle of incidence of the s wave and the sharpness of the velocity transition between the alluvium and bedrock as more accurate basin models are developed 3 d simulations should become valuable for predicting ground motions in sedimentary basins for future large earthquakes

site amplification at five locations in san francisco california a comparison of s waves codas and microtremors abstract we compare microtremor data to weak motion s wave and coda recordings at sites in san francisco in order to clarify the range of applicability of microtremor data to ground motion prediction we also compare s wave results to coda results for each type of data we compute spectral ratios of motions from two soil rock station pairs and from an uphole downhole pair in the marina district we compute horizontal vertical ratios nakamura9s method at a soil site a rock site and the surface and borehole instruments in the station pair analyses microtremor data show amplifications at the same fundamental frequency as s waves but the frequencies of other peaks do not agree the amplification at frequencies higher than 2 hz is greater in the microtremor data station pair ratios of coda data generally show spectral peaks occurring at the same frequencies but with levels varying from one to four times the amplification from s wave ratios nakamura9s method of analyzing microtremors agrees better with s wave station pair results than the microtremor station pair method over a limited frequency band that varies from station to station

site amplification in the san fernando valley california variability of site effect estimation using the s wave coda and h v methods during the months that followed the 17 january 1994 m 6 7 northridge california earthquake portable digital seismic stations were deployed in the san fernando basin to record aftershock data and estimate site amplification factors this study analyzes data recorded on 31 three component stations from 38 aftershocks ranging from m 3 0 to m 5 1 and depths from 0 2 to 19 km site responses from the 31 stations are estimated from coda waves s waves and ratios of horizontal to vertical h v recordings for the coda and the s waves site response is estimated using both direct spectral ratios and a generalized inversion scheme results from the inversions indicate that the effect of qs can be significant especially at high frequencies site amplifications estimated from the coda of the vertical and horizontal components can be significantly different from each other depending on the choice of the reference site the difference is reduced when an average of six rock sites is used as a reference site in addition when using this multi reference site the coda amplification from rock sites is usually within a factor of 2 of the amplification determined from the direct spectral ratios and the inversion of the s waves however for nonrock sites the coda amplification can be larger by a factor of 2 or more when compared with the amplification estimated from the direct spectral ratios and the inversion of the s waves the h v method for estimating site response is found to extract the same predominant peaks as the direct spectral ratio and the inversion methods the amplifications determined from the hiv method are however different from the amplifications determined from the other methods finally the stations were grouped into classes based on two different classifications general geology and a more detailed classification using a quaternary geology map for the los angeles and san fernando areas average site response estimates using the site characterization based on the detailed geology show better correlation between amplification and surface geology than the general geology classification

explosion earthquake and ambient noise recordings in a pliocene sediment filled valley inferences on seismic response properties by reference and non reference site techniques abstract explosion earthquake and ambient noise recordings were collected at the eastern edge of a pliocene sediment filled valley nearby the town of san casciano dei bagni tuscany central italy the anomalous amplification of amplitudes as high as a factor of 20 between sediment and hard rock sites shown by classical spectral ratios were compared with results obtained by using non reference site techniques like that of nakamura 1989 and its receiver function like extension the explosion data were collected in june 1990 as part of a crustal refraction experiment carried out in the monti vulsini volcanic area a linear array of 13 digital stations was deployed orthogonally to the eastern border of the radicofani graben 2 stations were set up on a bedrock outcrop whereas the remaining 11 were deployed on soft sediments 100 m apart along a straight line toward the center of the valley during a second part of the study two stations were left in the field to record local and regional seismicity acquiring data from more than 150 events from a seismic swarm that occurred in the monti vulsini volcanic area in february 1992 with a maximum magnitude m d 3 8 spectral ratios were computed on the 41 strongest events showing a seismic response consistent with that computed using explosion data at least in the 0 5 to 4 hz frequency band non reference site techniques were employed to analyze earthquake and noise data although it is clear that the horizontal vertical h v spectral ratios describe some intrinsic properties of sites noise and earthquake data give equivalent results in our case they failed in recognizing both resonances and amplification levels large amplifications shown by classical spectral ratios were probably due to basin induced surface waves and 3d resonances seismic waves recorded by a small 50m radius 2d array deployed within the valley provided instrumental evidence for the existence of waves diffracted locally on lateral heterogeneities

early atmospheric oxygen levels constraints from archaean photoautotrophy various independent lines of evidence suggest that photoautotrophic carbon fixation is a very ancient process that had attained control of the terrestrial carbon cycle from at least 3 5 ga if not 3 8 ga since it is generally accepted that only biological processes could substantially increase the negligible oxygen pressures sustained on the early earth by inorganic photochemistry probably between 10 8 and 10 14 present atmospheric level pal the advent of photoautotrophy would provide a limiting condition for the oxygenation of terrestrial near surface environments however as the size of the free oxygen reservoir is determined by the kinetics of the geochemically relevant oxygen consuming reactions we may assume that the start of photosynthetic oxygen production did not result in an instantaneous buildup of modern p o 2 levels low atmospheric oxygen pressures generally inferred for the archaean and lower proterozoic earth would therefore indicate extremely rapid processes of oxygen consumption in certain compartments of the ancient exogenic system notably the hydrosphere rather than the non existence of photosynthetic oxygen production at this time

simulation of 3d elastic wave propagation in the salt lake basin abstract we have used a 3d finite difference method to model 0 2 to 1 2 hz elastodynamic site amplification in the salt lake valley utah the valley is underlain by a sedimentary basin which in our model has dimensions of 48 by 25 by 1 3 km simulations are carried out for a p wave propagating vertically from below and for p waves propagating horizontally to the north south east and west in a two layer model consisting of semi consolidated sediments surrounded by bedrock results show that in general sites with the largest particle velocities cumulative kinetic energies duration times of motion and spectral magnitudes overlie the deepest parts of the basin the maximum values of these parameters are generally found above steeply dipping parts of the basin walls the largest vector particle velocities are associated with p or sv waves that come from within 10 of the source azimuth low energy s and surface waves follow the strongest arrivals the largest peak particle velocities cumulative kinetic energies signal durations and spectral magnitudes in the simulations are respectively 2 9 15 9 40 0 and 3 5 times greater than the values at a rock site measured on the component parallel to the propagation direction of the incident p wave scattering and or mode conversions at the basin boundaries contribute significantly to the signal duration times as a check on the validity of our simulations we compared our 3d synthetic seismograms for the vertically incident plane p wave to seismograms of nearly vertically incident teleseismic p waves recorded at an alluvium site in the valley and at a nearby rock site the 3d synthetics for the alluvium site overestimate the relatively small amplification of the initial p wave and underestimate the large amplification of the coda using 2d simulations we find that most of the discrepancies between the 3d synthetic and observed records can be explained by an apparently incorrect total sediment thickness omission from the model of the near surface low velocity unconsolidated sediments and of attenuation and the inexact modeling of the incidence angle of the teleseism the records from a 2d simulation in which these deficiencies are remedied with q 65 and which also includes topography and a near surface velocity gradient in the bedrock provide a better match to the teleseismic data than the records from the simple two layer 3d simulation our results suggest that for steeply incident p waves the impedance decrease and resonance effects associated with the deeper basin structure control the amplification of the initial p wave arrival whereas reverberations in the near surface unconsolidated sediments generate the large amplitude coda these reverberations are caused mainly by p to s converted waves and their strength is therefore highly sensitive to the incidence angle of the source

geochemistry of late archaean stromatolites from zimbabwe evidence for microbial life in restricted epicontinental seas we report comprehensive trace element and sr isotope data for microbial carbonates from the archaean mushandike limestone masvingo greenstone belt zimbabwe the stromatolites have very coherent ree y patterns and share the essential shale normalised characteristics of other archaean marine precipitates positive la and gd anomalies absence of a negative cc anomaly and a strongly superchondritic y ho ratio mixing models constrain the maximum amount of shale contamination to 0 25 1 and calculated detritus free carbonate ree y systematics require precipitation from seawater in terms of light ree over heavy ree depletion however the studied samples are very different from all other known archaean marine precipitates in shale normalised plots the mushandike samples yield a negative slope a very restricted regional input source of the dissolved load is indicated because normalisation with locally occurring tonalite gneiss ree y data yields a pattern closely resembling typical shale normalised archaean marine chemical sediments the disappearance of a negative eu anomaly when patterns are normalised with local tonalite gneiss strengthens this interpretation sr isotope ratios are strongly correlated with trace element contents and ratios which explains the modest scatter in sr isotope ratios as representing minor clastic contamination importantly even the least contaminated samples have very radiogenic initial sr 87 sr 86 ratios 0 7184 implying sr input from an ancient high rb sr source such as the early archaean gneisses of south central zimbabwe a local ancient 3 5 3 8 ga source is also indicated by previously published pb isotope datasets for the mushandike stromatolites this is entirely compatible with the occurrence of 3 7 3 8 ga zircons in quartzites and metapelites from comparably old greenstone belts within less than 150 km of the studied locality comparison of the pb isotope ratios of the mushandike stromatolites with 2 7 and 2 6 ga old stromatolites from the neighbouring belingwe greenstone belt demonstrates differences in initial isotope composition that relate to the extent of exchange with the open ocean the development of numerous basins on old continental crust with water masses variably restricted from the open ocean suggests a lack of strong vertical topography on this late archaean craton c 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

site response estimation from earthquake data abstract aftershocks of the 1989 loma prieta california earthquake are used to estimate site response along the san francisco peninsula a total of 215 shear wave records from 24 sources and 21 sites are used in a linear inversion for source and site response spectra the methodology makes no assumptions about the shape of the source spectrum however to obtain a stable unique inverse a q model and geometrical spreading factor are assumed as well as a constraint on site response that sets the site response averaged over two specific stations to 1 0 site responses calculated by this formulation of the problem are compared with other studies in the same region that use different methodologies and or data the shear wave site responses compare favorably with estimates based on an 2 constrained source model comparison with coda amplification factors is not as close but still favorable considering that the coda values were determined for nearby locations with similar geology and not the same sites the degree of agreement between the three methods is encouraging considering the very different assumptions and data used

microearthquake spectra from the anza california seismic network site response and source scaling abstract we analyzed spectra of local microearthquakes recorded by the anza california seismic network to isolate the effects of site response and to investigate the scaling of source parameters for small earthquakes spectra of microearthquakes m m o 19 dyne cm at anza have shapes characteristic of the receiver sites and are generally independent of the source region thus the site response is a major conditioner of the observed spectral shape to remove the effects of site response from the spectra of a m 3 event and isolate its source spectrum we divided by the spectra of an adjacent aftershock used as an empirical green9s function event the spectral ratios indicate that the apparent corner frequencies of small earthquakes m o 19 dyne cm observed at even the high f max stations on hard rock are much lower than the source corner frequencies the spectral ratios are consistent with stress drop remaining constant with decreasing seismic moment for events with moments as small as 10 18 dyne cm the spectral ratios display remarkable agreement between sites which showed vast differences in their original spectra indicating that the spectral division effectively removed the site response the source spectrum of the m 3 event has a high frequency spectral fall off of about 2 an apparent dependence of high frequency fall off with seismic moment in the original spectra can also be explained by the effects of site response the difference between the p and s wave corner frequencies and high frequency roll offs in the observed spectra for these events is the result of the site response and is not a source property the shapes of the spectra of microearthquakes at anza can largely be explained by attenuation at shallow depth with a frequency independent q for some sites near surface resonances are also apparent in the spectra of microearthquakes it is indicated by t values determined for each site that q p q s for the shallow low q layer further evidence of low near surface q is observed in the anomalous spectra of an unusually shallow earthquake source depth 1 km in the network the spectra from this shallow event are depleted in high frequency energy at most stations relative to those of deeper events this observation can be explained by a low q surficial zone for stations of the network situated on alluvium this low q layer has a maximum thickness of about 3 km and maximum p and s wave q values of 30 to 50

excitation and propagation of lg from earthquakes in central asia with implications for explosion earthquake discrimination broadband lg records from 52 shallow earthquakes that occurred near the balapan and lop nor nuclear test sites have been used to study spectral characteristics of the excitation and propagation of the lg phase in central asia using a source model that falls off as 2 at high frequencies and a nonlinear inversion method we simultaneously inverted for lg seismic moments m0 corner frequencies fc and path variable values of q0 and qlg at 1 hz and its power law frequency dependence the logarithms of m0 obtained using lg correlate linearly with logarithms of fc the slope being about 3 56 when all data are used and 4 04 when data were sufficient that full inversions could be performed these slopes differ only slightly from the slope of 3 83 obtained in our earlier studies using underground nuclear explosions the fc values in this study are systematically lower than those found for explosions at the same m0 level a comparison of corner frequencies and lg moment values for unknown events with the plots for known events of this study therefore provides means to discriminate between earthquakes and explosions the mb values are systematically lower for earthquakes of this study than for previously studied explosions at the same seismic moment moreover the logarithms of lg moments obtained in this study correlate linearly with a slope of 1 04 with mb values when all data are used and 1 21 when only well recorded events are used these slopes are close to the slope of 1 19 obtained for explosions the average qlg values along the paths used in this study agree well with those obtained using explosion data in central asia and with reported lg coda q values

stromatolites at 3 500 myr and a greenstone granite unconformity in the zimbabwean archaean two controversial areas of geological endeavour are the establishment of the antiquity of life and the tectonic setting of greenstone sequences we record here the recent discoveries in the fort victoria greenstone belt of stromatolites in limestones assigned to 3 500 myr minimum age sebakwian group rocks of the rhodesian archaean craton within zimbabwe and a nearby outcrop of a thin sedimentary formation basal to a thick 2 700 myr volcanic pile resting with definite unconformity on 3 500 myr mushandike granite

an open system fractional crystallization model for very early continental crust formation abstract a model is discussed which seeks to explain the origin of archaean tonalitic trondhjemitic granodioritic ttg crust by an open system fractional crystallization mechanism following the assumption that in the pre and early archaean the melt which formed above sites of large scale mantle upwelling was too voluminous and too hot to solidify an almost global near surface partially molten zone could form the magma in this layer would converge above mantle sinks and undergo fractional crystallization recharged fractionating reservoirs would form at sites of convergence the major element composition of the magma in such reservoirs would evolve towards one resembling that of ttg rocks provided that amphibole was a significant fractionating phase from such reservoirs their incompatible as well as compatible trace element abundances would also become similar to those of ttg terrains it is proposed that such terrains resulted from the consolidation of these recharged fractionating reservoirs it is shown that the reservoirs would remain indistinguishable from the primitive mantle in terms of radiogenic isotopes so that model ages cannot be greater than the age of their consolidation consideration of the main aspects of greenstone belts and archaean high grade terrains indicates no contradictions with the model the intrusion of late archaean adamellites and granites is interpreted as an indirect effect of pressure induced breakdown of amphibole in the cumulate underlying the ttg crust which in turn resulted from crustal shortening cratonization is seen as the result of consolidation not only of the crust but also of the underlying cumulate as subcontinental lithosphere