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The determination of the accurate composition ratio of scattering mechanisms (volume scattering, double-bounce scattering, and surface scattering) within a radar backscatter is essential to validate current polarimetric decomposition techniques. Multiincidence angle and multipolarimetric synthetic aperture radar (MIMP SAR) observations at the X- and L-bands were applied to rice paddies at late vegetative stage in Niigata City in Japan in 2014 and 2016, respectively. In this paper, multifrequency MIMP SAR analysis is introduced based on the observation results. The approach, combined with theoretical characterization of the data by a discrete scatterer model, showed that rice panicles affect the backscatter from rice paddies. Contrary to expectation, an effect of transmissivity by using different bands is not obvious. The similar level of copolarization (HH and VV) backscatter at X- and L-bands could be explained by the effective size of rice panicles. They are the most characteristic scatters in rice paddy field with respect to multiple frequency polarimetric sensing. In addition, HV shows a distinct sensitivity to the mean orientation angle and the size of panicles regardless of the wavelength. The mean orientation angle affects the polarimetric randomness under azimuthal symmetry, whereas the size of panicles directly affects the attenuation of the volume scattering from the grains. The multifrequency MIMP SAR analysis also indicated the importance of considering the backscatter and attenuation in the interpretation of the backscattering cross section from vegetated fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epicentral distance can be estimated from growth of the initial P-waves in real time, and this estimation is used in the earthquake early-warning system in Japan, especially for railways. This estimation is based on the relationship between the growing initial P-waves and epicentral distance. The initial P-waves grow gradually with increasing distance from the epicentre because geometrical spreading, scattering and intrinsic attenuation blunt their shape. Therefore, the growing form of the initial P-waves can be used to estimate the epicentral distance. However, in practice, the relationship is not uniform and the growth curves (i.e. gradient) are not a perfect function of epicentral distance. Therefore, the epicentral distance estimated from the initial P-waves involves significant uncertainty, which decreases the accuracy of the early-warning system for strong motions. In this study, we examined the causes of error in this relationship using theoretical calculations based on the Born approximation, which indicate that the growth curves of the P-waves fluctuate due to regionally different heterogeneous conditions in the subsurface medium. Therefore, we propose a robust relationship between the initial P-waves and epicentral distance considering regional heterogeneous conditions by analysing real earthquakes (magnitude 4–5) in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A quick response to a large-scale natural disaster such as earthquake and tsunami is vital to mitigate further loss. Remote sensing, especially the spaceborne sensors, provides the possibility to monitor a very large scale area in a short time and with regular revisit circle. Damage ranges and damage levels of the destructed urban areas are extremely important information for rescue planning after an event. Rapid mapping of the urban damage levels with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is still challenging. Compared with single-polarization SAR, fully polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) has a better potential to understand the urban damage from the viewpoint of scattering mechanism investigation. In radar polarimetry, the dominant double-bounce scattering mechanism in an urban area is primarily induced by the ground-wall structures and can reflect the changes of these structures. In this sense, urban damage level in terms of destroyed ground-wall structures can be indicated by the reduction of the dominant double-bounce scattering mechanism, which is the basis of this study. This work first establishes and validates the linear relationship between the urban damage level and the proposed polarimetric damage index using polarimetric model-based decomposition. Then, efforts are focused on the development of a rapid urban damage level mapping technique which mainly includes two steps of urban area extraction and polarimetric damage level estimation. The 3.11 East Japan earthquake and tsunami inducing great-scale destruction are adopted for study using L-band multitemporal spaceborne PolSAR data. Experimental studies demonstrate that the estimated damage levels are closely consistent to the ground-truth. The final urban damage level map for the full scene is generated thereafter. Results achieved in this study further validate the necessity of exploring fully polarimetric technique for damage assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the early morning on 16 October 2013, large debris flows resulted in over 30 people dead on Izu-Oshima Island, Japan, which were induced by heavy rainfall from the approaching Typhoon 1326 (Wipha). We successfully estimated the locations and migration processes of five large events of the debris flows, using the spatial distribution of high-frequency seismic amplitudes recorded by a seismic network on the island. The flows occurred on the western flank of the island, almost at the same place as the site where large traces of debris flows were identified after the disaster. During each event of debris flows, the estimated locations migrated downstream with increasing time, from the caldera rim of Miharayama volcano in the center of the island to its western side with a speed of up to 30 m/s. The estimated time series of source amplitudes are different from event to event, exhibiting a large variety of flow sequences while they seem to have repeated at a relatively narrow area over several tens of minutes. The present approach may be utilized for early detection and warning for prevention and reduction of the present type of disasters in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-frequency S-wave envelopes of microearthquakes well reflect the medium inhomogeneity of the Earth. Defining the peak delay time as the time lag from the direct S-wave onset to the maximum amplitude arrival of its envelope, we use this quantity to evaluate the strength of multiple forward scattering and diffraction due to random inhomogeneities along the seismic ray path. Analysing peak delay times of many microearthquakes occurred along the subducting Pacific Plate for 2–4, 4–8, 8–16 and 16–32 Hz frequency bands, we find a clear path dependence of the peak delay time in relation to the distribution of Quaternary volcanoes in northeastern Japan. Peak delay times of less than 2 s are usually observed at most of the stations in the study area, but large peak delay times of more than 5 s are observed in the backarc side stations for the case that S wave propagates beneath Quaternary volcanoes. The large peak delay times are inferred to be generated at a depth of 20–60 km beneath Quaternary volcanoes by considering ray paths under a 1-D velocity structure. These strongly inhomogeneous regions are located at low-velocity and high Vp/ Vs regions revealed from tomography, which suggests the inhomogeneity may be related to dykes and melts of ascending magma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aki (1969) first modeled coda waves of a local earthquake as a superposition of scattered surface waves. This paper attempts to clarify the constituents of surface-wave coda at long periods at very long lapse times. For a large earthquake of magnitude 7 or larger, vertical component oscillation in periods from 90 to 180 s persists for more than 20 hours from the earthquake origin time. Although the early portion of the coda envelope is successfully modeled by assuming incoherent scattered Rayleigh waves by heterogeneities distributed all over the Earth, the later potion of the observed coda envelope (roughly later than 35,000 s) has systematically larger amplitude than theoretical prediction. To clarify the cause of this discrepancy, we studied the constituents of vertical-component seismograms of three large earthquakes recorded by the F-net in Japan using the f- k power spectral analysis. We found that the direct and scattered fundamental-mode Rayleigh waves of velocity about 3.7 km/s are dominant in the earlier part of each envelope. It justifies the use of a scattering model of the fundamental Rayleigh waves for synthesizing the envelope. At lapse times later than 20,000 s–35,000 s, higher modes with phase velocities around 20 km/s become dominant. The transition time to the dominance of higher modes is found to become earlier for a deeper focus earthquake. The small coda attenuation factor from (1.90±0.23) × 10−3 to (2.38±0.32) × 10−3 estimated from later coda envelopes recorded at IRIS stations distributed worldwide also agrees with the attenuation factor of spheroidal modes according to PREM. We may interpret that higher mode waves are uniformly distributed at large lapse time due to large velocity dispersion and/or scattering and they dominate over the fundamental mode waves because of smaller attenuation in the lower mantle. The coda attenuation measurement proposed by Aki is found to be useful even for long periods and at very large lapse times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated temporal changes in the waveforms of S-coda from triggered earthquakes around the Moriyoshi-zan volcano in northeastern Japan. Seismicity in the area has drastically increased after the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku earthquake, forming the largest cluster to the north of the volcano. We analyzed distinct scattered wave packets (DSW) that are S-to-S scattered waves from the mid-crust and appeared predominantly at the high frequency range. We first investigated the variation of DSW for event groups with short inter-event distances and high cross-correlation coefficients (CC) in the time window of direct waves. Despite the above restriction, DSW showed temporal changes in their amplitudes and shapes. The change occurred gradually in some cases, but temporal trends were much more complicated in many cases. We also found that the shape of DSW changed in a very short period of time, for example, within ~ 12 h. Next, we estimated the location of the origin of the DSW (DSW origin) by applying the semblance analysis to the data of the temporary small-aperture array deployed to the north of the largest cluster of triggered events. The DSW origin is located between the largest cluster within which hypocentral migration had occurred and the low-velocity zone depicted by a tomographic study. This spatial distribution implies that the DSW origin was composed of geofluid-accumulated midway in the upward fluid movement from the low-velocity zone to the earthquake cluster. Though we could not entirely exclude the possibility of the effect of the event location and focal mechanisms, the temporal changes in DSW waveforms possibly reflect the temporal changes in scattering properties in and/or near the origin. The quick change in DSW waveforms implies that fast movement of geofluid can occur at the depth of the mid-crust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]