Award Date

1-1-2005

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Geoscience

First Committee Member

Catherine M. Snelson

Number of Pages

117

Abstract

This study examines the earthquake data recorded in Las Vegas, Nevada by the Las Vegas Valley Broadband array. Teleseismic P-wave arrivals were used to calculate travel time delays at basin sites relative to a hard-rock site. Delays up to 0.45 s were observed within the basin and correspond to thicknesses up to 1.52 km based on an average P-wave velocity of 4.37 km/s. Basin depths are shallower than expected and attributed to the upper unconsolidated basin fill. Regional earthquakes were used to calculate Rayleigh wave interstation group velocities along basin paths. Interstation group velocities range from 0.25 km/s to 2.14 km/s over periods of 1.3 s to 4.0 s. Shear velocities, calculated through inversion, range from 0.28 km/s to 2.85 km/s for the basin sediments and are attributed to the clays and unconsolidated materials within the upper basin. The shallow shear velocities determined through this method correlate well with geotechnical surveys and offer greater depth of penetration making this method a non-invasive means for calculating shear velocity at the basin scale.*; *This dissertation is a compound document (contains both a paper copy and a CD as part of the dissertation). The CD requires the following system requirements: Adobe Acrobat.

Keywords

Las Vegas; Basin; Depth; Investigating Nevada; Seismological; Shear; Structure; Study; Vegas; Velocity

Controlled Subject

Geophysics

File Format

pdf

File Size

4782.08 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Permissions

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this dissertation or thesis and wish to have the full text removed from Digital Scholarship@UNLV, please submit a request to digitalscholarship@unlv.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Download


COinS