A ML Scale for Local Earthquakes Magnitude in the Eastern-Middle Alborz

Due to absence of an appropriate scale for estimation of ML for the earthquakes in eastern Alborz Range, we calculated 1113 synthetic Wood-Anderson peak amplitudes waveforms of 215 earthquakes recorded by 23 stations at local hypocentral distances. The events were recorded by two local temporary seismological networks installed during 2007 and 2008 by the Geological Survey of Iran (GSI) and the stations of the permanent network of the Institute of Geophysics of University of Tehran (IGUT). Both temporary networks were installed for two discontinuous periods of nine months in the eastern- middle Alborz. In order to estimate an empirical attenuation curve for ML amplitudes, A, read the stations at very short hypocentral distances, we fit a parametric relationship to the peak amplitude readings while considering geometrical spreading, intrinsic attenuation and stations corrections. We obtained the following empirical attenuation relationship:Rij is hypocentral distance in km between the jth station pair and ith earthquake and Sj is value of station correction for the jth stationThe realtionship clearly indicates a larger attenuation for shear waves in short hypocentral distances below 20 km. Our new ML relationship implies that using ML relationship derived for hypocentral distances larger than 50 km would overestimate ML magnitude of events recorded by our local networks by about half of unit magnitude. Thus we suggest that for local networks in other regions lacking any local ML relationship, ML relationship derived in this study to be used.