Topographic Slope as a Proxy for Seismic Site Conditions and Amplification

TLDR

The authors propose a technique to generate first‑order seismic site‑condition maps directly from topographic slope data. They calibrate the method using global 30‑arc‑second topography and VS30 measurements from the U.S., Taiwan, Italy, and Australia, correlating VS30 with slope to derive region‑specific parameters for active tectonic and stable shield areas. The slope‑based maps recover key spatial variations of California site‑condition maps, predict VS30 in the low‑relief Mississippi Embayment, and generally correlate well with other regional maps, offering a simple, uniform mapping approach.

Abstract

We describe a technique to derive first-order site condition maps directly from topographic data. For calibration, we use global 30 arc sec topographic data and V S 30 measurements (here V S 30 , refers to the average shear-velocity down to 30 m) aggregated from several studies in the U.S., as well as in Taiwan, Italy, and Australia. V S 30 values are correlated against topographic slope to develop two sets of parameters for deriving V S 30 : one for active tectonic regions where topographic relief is high, and one for stable shields where topography is more subdued. By taking the gradient of the topography and choosing ranges of slope that maximize the correlation with shallow shear-velocity observations, we can recover, to first order, many of the spatially varying features of sitecondition maps developed for California. Our site-condition map for the low-relief Mississippi Embayment also predicts the bulk of the V S 30 observations in that region despite rather low slope ranges. We find that maps derived from the slope of the topography is often well correlated with other independently-derived, regional-scale site-condition maps, but the latter maps vary in quality and continuity, and subsequently, also in their ability to match observed V S 30 measurements contained therein. Alternatively, the slope-based method provides a simple approach to uniform site condition mapping.