Analysis of non-diffuse characteristics of the seismic noise field in southern California based on correlations of neighbouring frequencies

Abstract

Non-diffuse characteristics of the ambient seismic noise wavefield recorded at 154 broadband stations in southern California are analysed by computing the correlation matrix of power spectral values at neighbouring frequencies. The similarities of the derived correlation matrices are compared by choosing a different reference station at a time. The data recorded by the different stations are classified into five groups using a hierarchical clustering algorithm based on the similarity of the correlation matrices. Stations belonging to different groups are clustered spatially in the Los Angeles basin, mountains and regions farther from the coast. The deviations from diffuse wavefield in the correlation matrices of representative stations from the five groups are inverted for dominant cross-frequency components. These are used to derive power spectral ratios of non-diffuse noise and fully diffuse noise. The similarity maps for different reference stations and the inverted cross-frequency components provide information on properties of the noise sources and propagation/scattering characteristics in the different regions.