Estimation of P-waves frequency dependence of quality factor in Qeshm Island

Seismology has an important role in identifying earth structure by studying seismic waves. The amplitude and frequency of these waves change when they pass into the earth due to various parameters including anisotropy and heterogeneity. Seismic waves decay as they radiate away from their sources, partly for geometric reasons because their energy is distributed on an expanding wave front, and partly because their energy is absorbed by the material they travel through. The energy absorption depends on the material properties.
The amplitude of seismic waves decreases with increasing distance from earthquake, explosion, and impact sources. How this amplitude decrease occurs and how rapidly it occurs and how it depends on the frequency of the seismic waves is fundamentally important to the efforts to describe Earth structure and seismic sources.
Attenuation of seismic waves is expressed with inverse quality factor (Q-1) and helps understand the physical laws governing the propagation of seismic waves in the lithosphere.
The observed seismic-wave amplitudes usually decay exponentially with increasing traveled distance after the correction for geometrical spreading, and decay rates is proportional to Q−1 which characterizes the spatial attenuation for P-wave.
An earthquake with magnitude Mw 5.8 occurred on Qeshm Island, on the western edge of the Strait of Hormuz in SE Zagros, on November 27, 2005. From 2005 December 2 to 2006 February 26, a dense seismological network of 17 stations was installed in the epicentral region of the 2005 November 27 Qeshm sequence.
In this study, 661 aftershocks were selected to estimate the frequency dependence relationship of the quality factor of P-wave with coda normalization method. The coda normalization method was used for the estimation of the quality factor of the longitudinal waves at 9 frequency band (the central frequency: 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 5, 7, 10, 14, 19, 24). The frequency dependence relationship for the longitudinal waves are Qp = 0.059f -0.94 in the study area. As reported from other parts of world and Iran, the high value of attenuation in Qeshm may be because of the presence of some soft sediments such as a salt dome. Another reason for this high attenuation, probably due to using aftershocks data. After main shocks occurred, the medium must smash and cracked, and as a result, more heterogeneity and consequently, attenuation increase. The quality factor at a reference frequency of 1.0 Hz is less than 200. Therefore, it can be concluded the area is very active in terms of tectonic plates and seismicity which represents the accumulation of salt domes in this part of Zagros.