Seismic Wave Amplification in Las Vegas: Site Response and Empirical Estimates of Ground Motion (original) (raw)

This presentation will summarize a multidisciplinary effort to understand seismic wave amplification in Las Vegas Valley. The project involves weak motion recording and analysis, geotechnical and seismic refraction field studies, geologic and lithologic interpretation and model building. We will provide a brief overview of the project, then focus on specifics of seismic wave amplification including observations and interpretations. We analyzed recordings of nuclear explosions from the Nevada Test Site (NTS) and regional earthquakes to estimate site response in Las Vegas. An empirical transfer function method was used to transform ground motion time-series at one (reference) station to other stations, using frequency dependent site response curves in the band 0.2-5.0 Hz. The method transforms the time-series to the frequency domain by Fast Fourier transform, multiplies the amplitude spectrum by the site response curve and inverse FFT's back to the time domain. The approach is va...