Abstract
Surface wave azimuthal anisotropy in the uppermost crust could be essential to obtain the patterns of the local stress field and shallow Earth’s interior structures. We used the micro-earthquakes (M ≤ 4) waveforms recorded by the Tehran Disaster Mitigation and Management Organization (TDMMO) and Iranian Seismological Center (IrSC) networks between 2006 and 2018. We applied the multiple filter analysis, FTAN, to measure Rayleigh wave group velocities and then inverted them to obtain isotropic and fast anisotropic direction maps at periods of 0.5 to 3.0 s. After obtaining the local dispersion curve for each geographic grid point, we applied a 1D VS inversion procedure. We inserted the resulting model into the original grid point to obtain a quasi-3D VS model in the Tehran region. According to these results, we divided the study area into five local fast anisotropic direction sectors. The resulting velocity maps indicate that the Tehran basin, with relatively low velocity, has been filled out by alluvial deposits with thicknesses between 0.4 km (in the north) and 1.2 km (in the south). In contrast, the fast-direction pattern in this basin changes from W-E (sector #2-west) to N-S (sector #4). A low-to-high-velocity anomaly change inside the basin and near-surface depths (up to 3 km) can illustrate the secondary faults, such as the Pardisan fault. The northern Tehran mountains appear with a high velocity in these maps with three different fast anisotropy directions (sectors #1, part of #2-west, and #5). This feature has also been observed in other stress field studies. In general, our tomographic results in the uppermost crust indicate that the azimuthal anisotropy can provide the velocity structure and illustrate the local stress field.
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Data availability
The datasets are available by official request to the IrSC and TDMMO.
Data and resources
The data was provided by the Tehran Disaster Mitigation and Management Organization (TDMMO; http://tdmmo.tehran.ir) and the Iranian Seismological Center (IrSC; http://irsc.ut.ac.ir). The datasets analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to the internal rules in TDMMO and IrSC but are available by official request to these agencies. The focal mechanism is available at http://irsc.ut.ac.ir/tansormoman/20200507.2018,Mw4.9.pdf, (last accessed July 2023).
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Acknowledgements
T.S. thanks the Fundação de Apoio à Universidade de São Paulo, FUSP (project number 3930) and the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP), Sao Paulo, Brazil (grant number 2016/20952-4). This study was performed by a micro-earthquake dataset recorded by the Tehran Disaster Mitigation and Management Organization (http://tdmmo.tehran.ir; not openly available to the public; last accessed July 2023) and the Iranian Seismological Center (IrSC) at the University of Tehran/Iran (http://irsc.ut.ac.ir; available upon electronic online request; last accessed July 2023). The geological map in Fig. 1 was prepared by the National Geosciences Database of Iran (NGDIR; http://www.ngdir.ir). All plots were made using Generic Mapping Tools (GMT), version 6.4.0 (Wessel and Smith, 1998; www.soest.hawaii.edu/gmt; last accessed July 2023). We would also like to thank the editor, Prof. Dr. Maria Rosaria Gallipoli, and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and useful suggestions.
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All authors contributed to the study conception, design, data collection-preparation, and analysis as follows:
Taghi Shirzad: preparing dataset, conceptualization, investigation, formal analysis, methodology, software, writing manuscript and editing, and validation
Farzam YaminiFard: preparing dataset, re-locating events, conceptualization, and editing manuscript
Mojtaba Naghavi: preparing dataset, re-locating events, conceptualization, and writing manuscript
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Highlights
• Surface wave azimuthal anisotropy can provide the patterns of the local stress field.
• Tehran region contains three different zones, including the Tehran basin, the north and west mountains.
• The fast directions of the azimuthal anisotropy represent 5 different sectors in the Tehran region.
Appendix 1
Appendix 1
See Fig. 8.
The effect of the location uncertainties of earthquakes on the inversion results0.7 s (a) and 2.5 s (b)
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Shirzad, T., YaminiFard, F. & Naghavi, M. Near-surface azimuthal anisotropy using the Rayleigh wave inversion in the Tehran region, Iran. J Seismol 27, 901–917 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-023-10169-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-023-10169-1