ON THE LIMITS OF LINEAR MOMENT TENSOR INVERSION OF SURFACE-WAVE SPECTRA

Some theoretical and practical limits to linear moment tensor inversion of surface waves are analyzed in detail, in particular when one or few stations are used for rapid determination of source parameters. The theory is briefly outlined and steps of preprocessing, especially corrections for source history and propagation, are discussed in order to guarantee the validity of the moment tensor inversion. The inverse problem is first studied from a theoretical point of view. Then the feasibility of the moment tensor inversion is tested from synthetic computations and the formalism is improved in order to obtain a better system conditioning. Finally, some cases of practical nonuniqueness of the solution are shown and possible restrictions to the applicability of the method are discussed. All steps are illustrated with the example of the M(s) = 6.9 Erzincan (Turkey) earthquake of March, 13, 1992.