Abstract
Strong-motions from 79 moderate magnitude (5.9 ≥ Mw) earthquakes that caused various degrees of impact on humans and built-environment in Japan between 1996 and 2019, after the start of K-NET and KiK-net, are presented. As such, most of the earthquakes occurred beneath the land, and agencies had reported damages from events as small as Mw 4.1. Together, large peak ground accelerations exceeding 500 cm/s2 were recorded during 15 earthquakes, reaching approximately 1128 cm/s2 during one event. Similarly, large peak ground velocities exceeding 30 cm/s were recorded during ten earthquakes, reaching about 76 cm/s to the maximum. Most of the large values aforementioned were recorded within a hypocentral distance of approximately 30 km and on soil site conditions. Intermediate to long-period ground motions are of growing concerns in urban areas located on sedimentary basins with mid-rise and high-rise buildings. The threshold magnitude for the large ground motions at the periods of about 2–5 s is not well understood. In March 2013, the Japan Meteorological Agency introduced four levels of long-period ground motion intensity (LPGMI) based on absolute velocity response spectra (AVRS) between 1.6 and 7.8 s. In the present data set, LPGMI of level 3 (AVRS 50–100 cm/s) and level 4 (AVRS >100 cm/s) were observed each at a single site from shallow-focus earthquakes of Mw 5.8 and 5.9 at distances of approximately 12 and 15 km, respectively. However, the peak response periods were relatively short (1.6–1.8 s). The data showed that LPGM from moderate earthquakes is of lower concern regarding earthquake early warning at distances beyond 200 km. The 2018 Mw 5.5 North Osaka earthquake, despite the moderate magnitude, caused the loss of six human lives and brought significant damage to buildings and lifelines. Comparing the data with the ground motion prediction equations (GMPEs) and other events suggested that the North Osaka earthquake was probably a higher stress drop event. These moderate earthquakes’ observations hinted that the commonly used GMPEs in Japan may not sufficiently grasp these earthquakes' hazards.
Introduction
Big earthquakes are generally well reported and investigated in detail for disaster prevention measures for future earthquakes. It is well known that strong-earthquakes of magnitudes over about six can cause damage to broad areas crossing town and city borders, sometimes resulting in many fatalities: for example, the 2009 Mw 6.3 L’Aquila earthquake that caused fatalities of over 300 people and left more than 65,000 homeless (e.g., ), the 2011 Mw 6.2 Christchurch earthquake that caused 181 deaths and widespread damages (e.g., ). On the other hand, damages from moderate magnitude events (moment magnitude Mw ≤ 5.9) are confined relatively to small areas and recorded by relatively few strong-motion sensors mainly due to sparse network operations. However, as the major cities and population centers in Japan are prone to large magnitude earthquakes due to the active plate tectonics in the region (e.g., ; ), dense strong-motion observation networks have been in operation throughout Japan, especially after the Kobe earthquake of 1995 (e.g., ; ). In the present study, I collected and analyzed more than 10,000 strong-motion records observed by K-NET and KiK-net () from the moderate magnitude events (4.1 ≤ Mw ≤ 5.9) during the years 1996–2019. Altogether, 79 events of the aforementioned magnitudes were selected from the list of damaging earthquakes provided by the Japan Meteorological Agency (). The moderate earthquakes' effects ranged from an injury to a person without reported damages to built-structures for some events to fatalities of six people, the destruction of several buildings, damages to lifelines and national treasures and cultural assets, disruption to social services, etc. by the Mw 5.5 North Osaka earthquake in 2018 (e.g., ; ). Examples of notable damaging moderate magnitude earthquakes recorded by modern instrumentation are the 2012 northern Italy earthquakes of Mw values between 5.5 and 6.0 (e.g., ; ), the 2011 Mw 5.1 Lorca earthquake in southeastern Spain (e.g., ; ), and so on.
This paper has mainly two objectives. The first is to introduce the peak ground motions from the damaging moderate magnitude events in terms of the peak ground accelerations (PGAs), peak ground velocities (PGVs), JMA instrumental intensities, and the absolute velocity response spectra (AVRS) at selected periods, and to discuss the factors that contributed to the generation of the larger values. Nationwide earthquake early warning (EEW) has been implemented in Japan since October 2007 (). The AVRS in the period range of 1.6–7.8 s has been used to provide the information on long-period ground motion intensity (LPGMI) by JMA since March 2013 (; ). Experimental EEW and real-time information on LPGMI has been operated in Japan (e.g., ). The threshold magnitudes and distance ranges for the large long-period ground motions are not known sufficiently because the sedimentary basins can remarkably amplify the long-period ground motions. For example, constructed ground motion prediction equations (GMPEs) for AVRS in the period range of 1–10 s with an objective of EEW of LPGMI using events of Mw ≥ 6.5. Analysis of data from the moderate earthquakes may also contribute to understanding the threshold magnitudes and distance ranges for EEW of short-period (conventional seismic intensity) and the long-period ground motions. Recently, a large-scale ocean bottom seismograph network, named as S-net (), has been operated in the Japan Trench area with the objectives of enhanced EEW and tsunami warnings. Preliminary ground motion analysis at the S-net sites revealed that the PGVs were much larger at the ocean bottom sites while the PGAs were similar to those recorded at the land sites (). An analysis of the ground motions from the damaging moderate magnitude earthquakes is an integral part of understanding the ground motions at the ocean bottom sites because the S-net data are expected to contribute to EEW. The 2018, Mw 5.5, North Osaka earthquake caused damages to wide areas despite the moderate magnitude, as mentioned above. PGA, PGV, and acceleration response spectra (ARS) for the North Osaka earthquake were compared with the GMPEs and data from similar magnitude events. The analysis indicated that the ground motions were significantly larger during the North Osaka earthquake. Therefore, another objective in this paper is to discuss the main features and generation mechanism of the strong-motions recorded during the 2018 Mw 5.5, North Osaka earthquake.
Data and Processing
The list of damaging earthquakes analyzed in this study are given in Table 1. The epicenters of the earthquakes are shown in Figure 1. The list was prepared from the list of damaging earthquakes reported online by JMA (), by selecting events that occurred after the start of K-NET and KiK-net and had moment magnitude (Mw) values between 4.1 and 5.9. The original list by JMA contained the information on the JMA magnitude of the events, but not the Mw values. For uniformity, the moment magnitudes of the analyzed events were taken from F-net, NIED (), except for the first and second events (see Table 1), which occurred in 1996. The F-net moment tensor solutions were not available in 1996. For the first event, the Mw value was taken from the GCMT catalog (), and for the second event, the value was taken from the JMA CMT catalog (see the data availability). The hypocenter information of all events were taken from the unified hypocenter catalog of JMA (see the data availability section).
TABLE 1
| SN | Date (JST) | Japan Meteorological Agency | F-net | Reported maximum intensity | Calculated maximum intensity | Remark | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lon | Lat | Depth | Mj | Mw | |||||
| 1 | 1996/09/09, 13:34 | 130.96 | 30.4893 | 22 | 5.8 | 5.7a | 4 | 5+ | Near Sea of Tanegashima |
| 2 | 1996/12/21, 10:28 | 139.86 | 36.095 | 53 | 5.6 | 5.4b | 5- | 6- | Southwest Ibaraki Prefecture |
| 3 | 1997/03/16, 14:51 | 137.5252 | 34.9282 | 39 | 5.9 | 5.6 | 5+ | 5+ | Northeast Aichi Prefecture |
| 4 | 1997/06/25, 18:50 | 131.6662 | 34.4415 | 8 | 6.6 | 5.8 | 5+ | 5- | Yamaguchi Prefecture |
| 5 | 1998/02/21, 09:55 | 138.7707 | 37.288 | 21 | 5.2 | 5 | 4 | 5- | Mid Niigata Prefecture |
| 6 | 1998/04/22, 20:32 | 136.57 | 35.165 | 10 | 5.5 | 5.2 | 4 | 5- | Shiga Gifu Border Region |
| 7 | 1998/09/03, 16:58 | 140.9097 | 39.7957 | 10 | 6.2 | 5.9 | 6- | 4 | Northern Iwate Prefecture |
| 8 | 1998/09/15, 16:24 | 140.7655 | 38.2782 | 13 | 5.2 | 5 | 4 | 5- | Southern Miyagi Prefecture |
| 9 | 1998/11/08, 21:40 | 140.0538 | 35.61 | 78 | 4.7 | 4.7 | 4 | 3 | Central Chiba Prefecture |
| 10 | 1999/03/26, 08:31 | 140.6162 | 36.4552 | 58 | 5 | 5.1 | 4 | 5- | Northern Ibaraki Prefecture |
| 11 | 1999/07/16, 02:59 | 133.1958 | 34.4247 | 20 | 4.5 | 4.2 | 4 | 4 | Eastern Hiroshima Prefecture |
| 12 | 1999/09/13, 07:56 | 140.1595 | 35.5663 | 77 | 5.1 | 5.3 | 4 | 3 | Central Chiba Prefecture |
| 13 | 2000/06/08, 09:32 | 130.7562 | 32.6953 | 10 | 5 | 4.9 | 5- | 5- | Southern Kumamoto Prefecture |
| 14 | 2000/10/31, 01:42 | 136.3485 | 34.2808 | 43 | 5.7 | 5.5 | 5- | 5- | Shima Peninsula Region |
| 15 | 2001/01/04, 13:18 | 138.7617 | 36.959 | 14 | 5.3 | 5.2 | 5- | 5+ | Mid Niigata Prefecture |
| 16 | 2001/04/03, 23:57 | 138.1087 | 34.9958 | 33 | 5.3 | 5.2 | 5+ | 4 | Central Shizuoka Prefecture |
| 17 | 2001/08/25, 22:21 | 135.6608 | 35.1472 | 10 | 5.4 | 4.9 | 4 | 4 | Mid Kyoto Prefecture |
| 18 | 2002/03/25, 22:58 | 132.6175 | 33.8213 | 46 | 4.7 | 4.7 | 4 | 4 | Akinada Setonaikai |
| 19 | 2002/06/14, 11:42 | 139.9803 | 36.2132 | 57 | 5.1 | 4.9 | 4 | 5+ | Southwest Ibaraki Prefecture |
| 20 | 2002/11/17, 13:47 | 136.6765 | 36.2988 | 8 | 4.7 | 4.5 | 4 | 5- | Ishikawa Prefecture |
| 21 | 2003/05/12, 00:57 | 140.089 | 35.8657 | 47 | 5.3 | 5.2 | 4 | 4 | Southern Ibaraki Prefecture |
| 22 | 2003/09/20, 12:54 | 140.3037 | 35.2155 | 70 | 5.8 | 5.7 | 4 | 4 | Kujukuri Coast Boso Peninsula |
| 23 | 2003/10/15, 16:30 | 140.0532 | 35.6103 | 74 | 5.1 | 5.1 | 4 | 4 | Central Chiba Prefecture |
| 24 | 2004/10/06, 23:40 | 140.0932 | 35.9857 | 66 | 5.7 | 5.7 | 5- | 5- | Southern Ibaraki Prefecture |
| 25 | 2004/12/14, 14:56 | 141.7033 | 44.0743 | 9 | 6.1 | 5.7 | 5+ | 6- | Rumor Region |
| 26 | 2005/01/09, 18:59 | 136.854 | 35.3085 | 13 | 4.7 | 4.4 | 4 | 4 | Central Aichi Prefecture |
| 27 | 2005/01/18, 21:50 | 139.0002 | 37.3677 | 8 | 4.7 | 4.5 | 4 | 5- | Mid Niigata Prefecture |
| 28 | 2005/02/16, 04:46 | 139.8963 | 36.036 | 45 | 5.3 | 5.4 | 5- | 5- | Southwest Ibaraki Prefecture |
| 29 | 2005/04/23, 00:23 | 138.2965 | 36.662 | 4 | 4.1 | 4.1 | 4 | 3 | Northern Nagano Prefecture |
| 30 | 2005/06/03, 04:16 | 130.5478 | 32.4955 | 11 | 4.8 | 4.6 | 5- | 4 | Amasa Region |
| 31 | 2005/06/20, 01:15 | 140.6947 | 35.7338 | 51 | 5.6 | 5.7 | 4 | 4 | Near Choshi City |
| 32 | 2005/07/23, 16:34 | 140.1385 | 35.5817 | 73 | 6 | 5.9 | 5+ | 5- | Central Chiba Prefecture |
| 33 | 2005/07/28, 19:15 | 139.8463 | 36.1262 | 51 | 5 | 4.9 | 4 | 4 | Southwest Ibaraki Prefecture |
| 34 | 2005/08/07, 01:05 | 140.1148 | 35.5595 | 73 | 4.7 | 4.7 | 4 | 3 | Central Chiba Prefecture |
| 35 | 2005/10/16, 16:05 | 139.9375 | 36.0393 | 47 | 5.1 | 5 | 4 | 4 | Southwest Ibaraki Prefecture |
| 36 | 2005/12/24, 11:01 | 136.8402 | 35.2307 | 43 | 4.8 | 4.7 | 4 | 4 | Central Aichi Prefecture |
| 37 | 2006/05/15, 01:42 | 135.221 | 34.2243 | 3 | 4.5 | 4.3 | 4 | 4 | Northwest Wakayama Prefecture |
| 38 | 2007/04/15, 12:19 | 136.4077 | 34.7912 | 16 | 5.4 | 5 | 5+ | 5+ | Northern Mie Prefecture |
| 39 | 2007/06/06, 23:42 | 131.4952 | 33.3338 | 11 | 4.9 | 4.7 | 4 | 4 | Northern Oita Prefecture |
| 40 | 2007/08/18, 04:14 | 140.36 | 35.3495 | 23 | 4.8 | 4.9 | 5- | 4 | Kujukuri Coast Boso Peninsula |
| 41 | 2007/10/01, 02:21 | 139.1185 | 35.2255 | 14 | 4.9 | 4.7 | 5+ | 5- | Hakone Region |
| 42 | 2008/03/08, 01:54 | 140.6117 | 36.4525 | 57 | 5.2 | 5.1 | 4 | 4 | Northern Ibaraki Prefecture |
| 43 | 2008/06/13, 11:21 | 137.7033 | 35.9115 | 13 | 4.7 | 4.3 | 4 | 4 | Western Nagano Prefecture |
| 44 | 2009/12/17, 23:45 | 139.1365 | 34.9588 | 4 | 5 | 4.8 | 5+ | 6- | East Off Izu Peninsula |
| 45 | 2009/12/18, 08:45 | 139.1293 | 34.9612 | 5 | 5.1 | 4.9 | 5+ | 6- | East Off Izu Peninsula |
| 46 | 2010/03/13, 21:46 | 141.4717 | 37.6142 | 78 | 5.5 | 5.5 | 4 | 4 | East Off Fukushima Prefecture |
| 47 | 2010/05/01, 18:20 | 139.1912 | 37.5592 | 9 | 4.9 | 4.6 | 4 | 4 | Northeast Niigata Prefecture |
| 48 | 2010/07/04, 04:33 | 140.9128 | 39.0247 | 7 | 5.2 | 5 | 4 | 4 | Southern Iwate Prefecture |
| 49 | 2011/03/15, 22:31 | 138.7145 | 35.3095 | 14 | 6.4 | 5.9 | 6+ | 6+ | Mt. Fuji Region |
| 50 | 2011/04/01, 19:49 | 140.364 | 40.2568 | 12 | 5 | 4.9 | 5+ | 5- | Northern Akita Prefecture |
| 51 | 2011/04/16, 11:19 | 139.9455 | 36.3408 | 79 | 5.9 | 5.8 | 5+ | 5+ | Southwest Ibaraki Prefecture |
| 52 | 2011/06/30, 08:16 | 137.9547 | 36.1885 | 4 | 5.4 | 5 | 5+ | 4 | Central Nagano Prefecture |
| 53 | 2011/08/01, 23:58 | 138.5477 | 34.7085 | 23 | 6.2 | 5.8 | 5- | 5- | Southern Suruga Bay Region |
| 54 | 2011/11/20, 10:23 | 140.5882 | 36.7107 | 9 | 5.3 | 5 | 5+ | 5- | Northern Ibaraki Prefecture |
| 55 | 2011/11/21, 19:16 | 132.8937 | 34.8717 | 12 | 5.4 | 5.2 | 5- | 5+ | Shimane Hiroshima Border |
| 56 | 2011/12/14, 13:01 | 137.2443 | 35.3555 | 49 | 5.1 | 5.1 | 4 | 4 | Southeast Gifu Prefecture |
| 57 | 2012/01/28, 07:43 | 138.977 | 35.4892 | 18 | 5.4 | 5.2 | 5- | 4 | Eastern Yamanashi Prefecture |
| 58 | 2012/07/10, 12:48 | 138.3883 | 36.8315 | 9 | 5.2 | 5.1 | 5- | 4 | Northern Nagano Prefecture |
| 59 | 2013/04/13, 05:33 | 134.829 | 34.4188 | 15 | 6.3 | 5.8 | 6- | 5+ | Awajishima Island Region |
| 60 | 2013/04/17, 17:57 | 139.353 | 34.0473 | 9 | 6.2 | 5.8 | 5+ | 5+ | Near Miyakejima Island |
| 61 | 2013/09/20, 02:25 | 140.6953 | 37.0513 | 17 | 5.9 | 5.4 | 5+ | 5+ | Eastern Fukushima Prefecture |
| 62 | 2014/07/08, 18:05 | 141.267 | 42.6498 | 3 | 5.6 | 5.4 | 5- | 5- | Iburi Region |
| 63 | 2014/09/16, 12:28 | 139.864 | 36.0937 | 47 | 5.6 | 5.5 | 5- | 5- | Southwest Ibaraki Prefecture |
| 64 | 2015/05/25, 14:28 | 139.6387 | 36.0543 | 56 | 5.5 | 5.2 | 5- | 5- | Eastern Saitama Prefecture |
| 65 | 2015/07/10, 03:32 | 141.5598 | 40.354 | 88 | 5.7 | 5.6 | 5- | 5- | Northern Iwate Prefecture |
| 66 | 2015/07/13, 02:52 | 131.8552 | 32.9927 | 58 | 5.7 | 5.5 | 5+ | 4 | Southern Oita Prefecture |
| 67 | 2015/09/12, 05:49 | 139.8292 | 35.5545 | 57 | 5.2 | 5 | 5- | 4 | Tokyo Bay Region |
| 68 | 2016/05/16, 21:23 | 139.8868 | 36.034 | 42 | 5.5 | 5.4 | 5- | 5- | Southwest Ibaraki Prefecture |
| 69 | 2016/06/16, 14:21 | 140.987 | 41.9485 | 11 | 5.3 | 5.2 | 6- | 6- | Uchiura Bay Region |
| 70 | 2016/12/28, 21:38 | 140.5742 | 36.7202 | 11 | 6.3 | 5.9 | 6- | 6- | Northern Ibaraki Prefecture |
| 71 | 2017/06/25, 07:02 | 137.5865 | 35.868 | 7 | 5.6 | 5.2 | 5+ | 5+ | Western Nagano Prefecture |
| 72 | 2017/07/01, 23:45 | 141.859 | 42.7877 | 27 | 5.1 | 5 | 5- | 5- | Ishikari Depression |
| 73 | 2017/07/11, 11:56 | 130.62 | 31.384 | 10 | 5.3 | 5.3 | 5+ | 5+ | Satsuma Peninsula Region |
| 74 | 2017/10/06, 23:56 | 141.1557 | 37.0875 | 53 | 5.9 | 5.7 | 5- | 5- | East Off Fukushima Prefecture |
| 75 | 2018/04/09, 01:32 | 132.5867 | 35.1847 | 12 | 6.1 | 5.6 | 5+ | 6- | Shimane Hiroshima Border |
| 76 | 2018/06/18, 07:58 | 135.6217 | 34.8443 | 13 | 6.1 | 5.5 | 6- | 6- | Kyoto Osaka Border Region |
| 77 | 2019/01/03, 18:10 | 130.5543 | 33.0273 | 10 | 5.1 | 4.9 | 6- | 4 | Northern Ariakekai Region |
| 78 | 2019/02/21, 21:22 | 142.0033 | 42.7662 | 33 | 5.8 | 5.5 | 6- | 6- | Ishikari Depression |
| 79 | 2019/05/25, 15:20 | 140.29 | 35.3568 | 38 | 5.1 | 4.9 | 5- | 4 | Kujukuri Coast Boso Peninsula |
List of damaging moderate magnitude earthquakes in Japan.
Note: The Mw value was taken from GCMT catalog.
The Mw value was taken from JMA CMT catalog. See the main text for the explanation.
FIGURE 1
Visual inspection of original accelerograms, velocity seismograms obtained by integrating accelerograms, and their Fourier spectra were carried out. Recordings were selected if both P- and S-onsets were present, and pre-event window of length 7 s was available. The corresponding mean acceleration of the pre-event window was reduced from the accelerograms to obtain peak ground motion parameters. Then, low cut filtering was applied at a corner frequency of 0.1 Hz for most of the recordings. However, for some recordings, the corner frequency for low-cut filtering was increased up to 0.5 Hz, based on the presence of noise. Cosine tapering was applied for a window of 5 s at both ends of the recordings. The ARS and AVRS were calculated for 5%-damping ratios using the method of . The sums of relative velocity responses and the corresponding velocity seismograms obtained by integration of filtered accelerograms give the absolute velocity responses, which were computed for each horizontal component. Finally, we calculated the vector sum of the two horizontal component absolute velocity responses and obtained the maximum value of all the time steps as the value of AVRS for each natural period.
Similarly, the ARS represents the peak vector of two horizontal component acceleration response time histories. The PGA and PGV values reported in this paper are larger ones of the PGAs and PGVs, respectively, of the two horizontal components. The definitions of PGA and PGV are different in some GMPEs, and they are defined at appropriate sections when they appear in this paper. An example plot of the acceleration and velocity seismograms is given in Figure 2 for two sites. The seismograms are discussed in the next section. The JMA instrumental intensity was computed following the procedure explained in . A comparison of the JMA instrumental intensity scale with the Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) scale and the computation procedure of JMA instrumental intensity can also be found in . provide the relationship between the JMA intensity, JMA instrumental intensity, and MMI scale according to which JMA intensity of 4, 5L or 5−, 5U or 5+, 6L or 6−, 6U or 6+, and 7 correspond to MMI scale of 6-7, 7-8, 8-9, 9-10, 10-11, and 12, respectively.
FIGURE 2
General Features of Strong-Motions
PGA and PGV
The PGAs and PGVs from all the earthquakes used in this study are plotted in Figures 3A,B, respectively. Figure 3A shows the PGAs (larger of two horizontal components) plotted as a function of hypocentral distance and magnitudes. The PGA values are colored by the magnitudes divided into four groups: 4.1–4.4, 4.5–4.9, 5.0–5.4, and 5.5–5.9. Out of the 79 earthquakes, 40 earthquakes had focal depths lower than 20 km. The median focal depth was about 23 km of all earthquakes. The minimum and maximum depths were approximately 3 and 88 km. The median prediction curves for Mw = 4.0, 4.5, 5.0, 5.5, and 6.0 are also shown in the figures for crustal type earthquake, focal depth of 20 km, and soil site condition using the equations in , . Similarly, the median prediction curves for interplate and intraslab earthquakes of Mw = 5.5 and 6 are drawn in the figures for two focal depths (30 km for interplate earthquake and 30 and 70 km for intraslab earthquake). The paper, , is, hereafter, referred to as SM 1999. The GMPEs in SM 1999 were constructed using events of Mw ≥ 5.8. However, the GMPEs are used here as reference GMPEs for PGA and PGV because of their widespread use in Japan. For example, the GMPEs for PGV in SM 1999 have been used by the Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion () in producing the national seismic hazard maps for Japan. For PGA, soil site condition means the site has Vs30 values (average S-wave velocity in the top 30 m of the soil column) lower than 620 m/s. For the PGV, the prediction curves are drawn for the Vs30 value of 300 m/s because this value is roughly the average site condition for the strong-motion stations (e.g., ).
FIGURE 3
Magnitude and distance are the two most commonly employed parameters in the GMPEs. Figures 3A,B show that the PGAs and PGVs generally depend on the magnitude and the distance. The values increase with the increase of magnitudes and decrease with the increase of distances, on average. These trends are generally captured well by the prediction curves plotted in the figures. However, a significant proportion of the data between the magnitude groups overlap. The amplitude and frequency content of ground motions are strongly modified by the local site conditions, propagation path, and source factors such as focal mechanisms, stress drops, rupture directivity effects and so on (e.g.,
FIGURE 4

(A,B): same plot as in Figure 3A, but the PGA values smaller than 100 cm/s/s are not shown, and the hypocentral distance is limited to 120 km. The data in (A) are color-coded by magnitude while data in b by focal depths. (C,D): similar to (A,B), but for the PGVs. The data are color-coded by magnitudes in (C) and by Vs30 in (D). Open circles show data lacking Vs30 values. The black curved lines denote the prediction curves in the same order, as plotted in Figure 3. The red thin and thick lines denote the median prediction curves for intraslab earthquakes of focal depths 30 and 70 km, respectively, for Mw = 6. The prediction curves were obtained using the GMPEs in
Here I discuss the plots of residuals for PGAs and PGVs against the different variables used in the GMPEs and against the predicted and observed values. The residuals in base-10 log-scale are plotted in Figure 5 for the PGAs from hypocentral distances smaller than 200 km. The residuals were grouped into different bins, and the binned mean values with plus-minus one standard deviation are also indicated in the figure. The binned mean residuals against the Mw values plotted in Figure 5A are positive, and the values decrease with the increase of magnitude. The mean values ranged between approximately 0.06 and 0.16. Similarly, the residuals against the hypocentral distance are plotted in Figure 5B. The plot shows that the binned mean residuals gradually decrease from short to long distances. In the construction of GMPEs in SM 1999, fault distance was used as a measure of source-to-site distance. I used the hypocentral distance as a measure of distance because the fault models of the events were not available except for few events. A mismatch between the fault distance and hypocentral distance may have resulted in the relatively larger residual values at the short distances. However, most of the recordings were from Mw values smaller than 5.5 for data points at short distances, and hence the difference between the fault and hypocentral distance may be small (see the Supplementary Material for the magnitude versus distance distribution of data). The residuals against the focal depth plotted in Figure 5C do not show a definite trend. The binned mean residuals plotted against the Vs30 values in Figure 5D show positive values for Vs30 values smaller than 600 m/s. For larger Vs30 values, the binned means are negative. The residuals against the predicted values and observed values are plotted in Figures 5E,F, respectively. The binned mean residuals for predicted PGAs >50 cm/s2 are relatively larger. The residuals plotted against the observed values show a linear trend in Figure 5F. The binned mean residuals for the observed PGAs >100 cm/s2 are larger than 0.6, which is larger than twice the standard deviation reported in SM 1999. The amount of data at small distances is fewer and the use of hypocentral distance is different from the fault distance used in the GMPEs. Therefore, the absolute value of residuals at short distances may not be accurate. However, the systematic difference of residual values between the soil and rock sites separated by Vs30 value of 620 m/s may indicate that the classification of sites into soil and rock based on the Vs30 value of 620 m/s may not be sufficient.
FIGURE 5

Plots of residuals for PGA data plotted in Figure 3A for hypocentral distances smaller than 200 km. The (A–F) show the distribution of residuals against the Mw, hypocentral distance, focal depth, Vs30, predicted PGA, and observed PGA, respectively. The vertical bars denote the mean values with plus-minus one standard deviation of the binned residuals.
The distributions of residuals for PGVs against the Mw, hypocentral distance, focal depth, Vs30, predicted PGV, and observed PGV are shown in Figures 6A–F, respectively. Different from the results for PGAs discussed above, the binned mean residuals tended to be lower for the PGVs. A gentle trend with Vs30 is seen; this is different from that for the PGAs, and may be due to that the Vs30 was used as continuous variable in the GMPEs for PGVs than just soil and rock sites for the PGAs. The binned mean residuals at small distances were relatively larger than at longer distances. The binned mean residuals for the observed PGVs > than 10 cm/s were larger than twice the standard deviation for PGV in SM 1999.
FIGURE 6

Plots of residuals for PGV data plotted in Figure 3B for hypocentral distances smaller than 200 km. The (A–F) show the distribution of residuals against the Mw, hypocentral distance, focal depth, Vs30, predicted PGA, and observed PGA, respectively. The vertical bars denote the mean values with plus-minus one standard deviation of the binned residuals.
The largest PGA was approximately 1,128 cm/s2, which was recorded at HKD020 (see Figure 2) during an Mw 5.7 event that occurred on December 14, 2004, at 14:56 JST in Rumoi, Hokkaido (see Figure 1 for the location of the epicenter, Event no. 25). The maximum value of the PGV for the event was about 73 cm/s, which was also recorded at HKD020 (see Figure 2). The largest PGV of approximately 76 cm/s was observed at the SZO011 site during an Mw 5.9 event (Event no. 49, see Figure 1 for the event location); the observed PGA was ∼981 cm/s2 at the site during the event. The instrumental intensities at the HKD020 and SZO011 sites were approximately 5.9 and 6.4, respectively. These values translate to 6− and 6+ intensities in the conventional JMA intensity scale and are identical to the reported maximum intensities for the two earthquakes (see Table 1).
Here I briefly discuss the mechanisms for the large PGA and PGV at the HKD020 site during the Mw 5.7, Hokkaido Rumoi earthquake, based on available literature. The site’s location, the epicenter of the event, and the F-net focal mechanism solution are given in a Supplementary Material. The site had S-wave velocity profiles known down to the depth of 10 m based on PS-logging, and the Vs10 was approximately 398 m/s. Based on empirical H/V spectral analysis and theoretical amplification models based on available shallow and deep velocity models,
Even though the dominating values of PGAs and PGVs were mostly from the large magnitude events, the color scale in Figures 3, 4 shows that relatively large PGAs and PGVs are possible from smaller magnitude events (Mw < 5) at short distances (<7 km). The PGAs and PGVs at these small distances were between 170 and 639 cm/s2, and 3–44 cm/s, respectively; the largest PGA and PGV were from an Mw 4.9 event recorded at the SZO002 site. Though it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss each event, the above-mentioned Mw 4.9 event is briefly discussed here. The event occurred on December 18, 2009, at 08:45 JST (Event no. 45 located near the west end of the Sagami Trough; see Figure 1 for the location of the event and Table 1 for the other information about the event). The acceleration and velocity seismograms at the SZO002 site are plotted in Figure 2 (right panels). The S-wave profile at the site was available up to 12 m, and the Vs10 at the site was 232 m/s. Figure 2B shows that the PGV on the EW-component is approximately 2.2 times the PGV on the NS-component. Available literature (
Instrumental Intensity
The instrumental intensities for all the events analyzed in this study are plotted in Figure 7A. The values are color-coded by the magnitudes. Median prediction curves for the instrumental intensities are also plotted based on the equations in
FIGURE 7

(A) JMA instrumental intensities for the same set of data plotted in Figure 3. The black lines denote the median prediction curves for crustal earthquakes of Mw = 4, 4.5, 5, 5.5, and 6, respectively, using the GMPEs in
Figures 7B,G shows the plots of residuals (observed instrumental intensity–predicted instrumental intensity) based on the GMPEs for instrumental intensity in MF 2013. The binned mean residuals against the Mw values and hypocentral distances are positive, and their trends are similar to those plotted in Figures 5A,B for the residuals for PGAs. The binned means are relatively larger for smaller magnitude events and at short distances. In MF 2013, two different parameters were used for site corrections. They are the depth to Vs 1.4 km/s for the effect of deep sediments and Vs30 for the effect of shallow sediments. The depths to Vs 1.4 km/s were taken from the J-SHIS (Japan Seismic Hazard Information Station) subsurface velocity model (
AVRS
The AVRS at the periods of 1.6, 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 s are plotted as a function of hypocentral distance and colored by magnitudes in Figure 8. As briefly described in the introduction section, long-period ground motion intensities (LPGMIs) are calculated from the AVRS in the period band of 1.6–7.8 s. The maximum value determines the level of intensity. The intensity levels are as follows: class 1 (5–15 cm/s), class 2 (>15–50 cm/s), class 3 (>50–100 cm/s), and class 4 (>100 cm/s). These intensity levels are indicated in Figure 8. Out of the 79 earthquakes, 47 earthquakes produced LPGMI of 1 or over, totaling 489 recordings. The dominant peak period was 1.6 s within the band of 1.6–7.8 s from 346 recordings. The number of recordings with the dominant peak period of 1.8 s was 59, the second-largest number. Similarly, the number of recordings with dominant peak periods between 2 and 2.8 s was 62, between 3 and 3.8 s was 13, and between 4 and 5 s was 9. The dominant peak periods >3 s were mostly from the Kanto basin area and were not from shallow events, but with focal depths between 20 and 40 km and magnitudes between 5.4 and 5.7. In Figure 1, it can be seen that most of the events have larger focal depths in the Kanto area, north of the Sagami Trough. However, the maximum intensity from these longer periods was 2. During the June 18, 2018, 07:58, North Osaka earthquake, LPGMI of level 2 was observed at ten sites, and the peak periods from the band of 1.6–7.8 s were mostly 1.6 s. It can be clearly seen in Figure 8 that the number of recordings with intensity 2 is only two at the period of 4 s. Also, from the plots in Figure 8, it may be inferred that the moderate earthquakes are of not serious concern at distances beyond 200 km. The distribution of peak spectral periods from the period band of 1–10 s against the Mw, hypocentral distance, focal depth and depth to Vs 1.4 km/s are provided in the Supplementary Material. In the Supplementary Material, the peak spectral periods are shown only for the records for which the maximum AVRS was >1 cm/s in the period band of 1–10 s. The peak periods increased generally with the increase of magnitude, hypocentral distance, and sediment thickness, while they decreased with the increase of focal depths. However, the peak periods scattered largely suggesting that multiple parameters can influence the spectral values and hence the peak periods.
FIGURE 8

Absolute velocity response spectra (AVRS) at the periods of 1.6, 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 s plotted against the hypocentral distance in A, B, C, D, respectively. The horizontal lines across the AVRS of 5, 15, 50, and 100 cm/s mark the threshold values for JMA long‐period ground motion intensities of 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively.
North Osaka Earthquake
Strong-Motions
The epicenter of the 2018 North Osaka earthquake is shown in Figures 9A,B. The larger values of the two horizontal components’ PGAs and PGVs observed at small distances are depicted along with the site codes in Figure 9B. Within an epicentral distance of 20 km, ten strong-motion stations of K-NET and KiK-net recorded the ground motions. Out of the ten stations, eight stations recorded PGAs >200 cm/s2 and PGVs >15 cm/s. The maximum PGA and PGV were approximately 794 cm/s2 and 40 cm/s, respectively, recorded at an epicentral distance of approximately 2.7 km at the same site (OSK002, Takatsuki). It was shown by several studies that the North Osaka earthquake occurred on two different faults closely separated in space almost simultaneously (
FIGURE 9

(A) Stars denote epicenters of three Mw 5.5 earthquakes in North Osaka, Southern Mie, and Aso Kumamoto regions, as depicted in the figure. The rectangle around the epicenter is the enlarged area in (B). The red dashed line represents the volcanic front. The F1 and F2 written near the focal mechanism plots in (B) are the double couple mechanisms proposed by
FIGURE 10

Comparison of the observed PGAs and PGVs during the Mw 5.5 North Osaka earthquake with the ground motion prediction curves. The horizontal axes denote the hypocentral distance. The data points in panels (A–D) are color-coded by Vs30 values while the data in (E,F) are by depth to Vs 1.4 km/s. The used prediction equations are indicated in each panel by alphanumeric codes. The codes SM 199, KN 2006, and MF 2013 mean the prediction equations in
FIGURE 11

Plots of residuals as a function of hypocentral distance after the site corrections for the data plotted in Figure 10 for the PGAs and PGVs. The figure parts A-F correspond to the figure parts in Figure 10. The residual values shown in the plots were obtained for the Mw value of 5.5. The magenta-colored vertical bars represent the error bars for binned data with mean error and plus‐minus one standard deviation. The green‐colored vertical bars show the error bars for comparison for the Mw value of 5.6.
In Figure 10, it can be seen that the PGAs and PGVs at distances smaller than about 50 and 40 km, respectively, are larger than the median values on average. Figure 11 shows the plots of residuals after the site corrections. The binned mean errors for two magnitude values (Mw = 5.5 and 5.6) are also plotted as a function of distance. The mean errors suggest a distance dependence of the residuals for PGAs and PGVs for the SM 1999 and KN 2006. On the other hand, the mean residuals are generally uniformly distributed for the MF 2013. The mean residuals give that the PGA data are larger by a factor of about 2.7, 2.3, and 1.8 than the values from the median prediction curve at distances smaller than 20 km, between 20 and 50 km, and between 50 and 100 km, respectively, on average, for the SM 1999.
Similarly, the PGV data are larger by a factor of about 3.2, 2.0, and 1.3 at the above distance ranges, respectively, for the SM 1999. The results for the KN2006 are also similar: the PGA data are larger by factors of about 4.2, 3.5, and 2.6, while the PGV data are larger by factors of about 5, 3.3, and 1.9. The results for the MF 2013 are also similar: for the PGA, the data are larger by factors of about 3, 2.5, and 2.3, respectively, and for the PGV, the data are larger by factors of about 3.2, 2.3, and 1.9, respectively. The binned mean errors for the case of Mw = 5.6 are slightly smaller than the values for the case of Mw = 5.5. Based on the above results, it may be said that SM 1999, which has been used in the seismic hazard estimation for Japan by
Figure 12 shows the residual plots for acceleration response spectra at the periods of 0.1, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, and 7 s after the site corrections, using the prediction equations in MF 2013. At periods up to 2 s, the results are similar to those discussed above for PGA and PGV. However, at the periods of 5 and 7 s, the residuals were generally within the expected range of errors at longer distances, while the data were noticeably underpredicted at distances smaller than about 40 km. The plots of the observed data as a function of distance for the above periods are shown in a Supplementary Material.
FIGURE 12

Plots of residuals as a function of hypocentral distance after the site corrections for the acceleration response spectra (ARS) at the periods of 0.1, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, and 7 s in panels, A-F, respectively, using the prediction equations in Morikawa and Fujiwara (2013). The residual values shown in the plots were obtained for the Mw value of 5.5. The magenta‐colored vertical bars denote the error bars for binned data with mean error and plus‐minus one standard deviation. The green‐colored vertical bars show the error bars for comparison for the Mw value of 5.6. See the supplementary file for the plots of ARS values as a function of hypocentral distance.
Comparison With Other Events
Here, the PGAs and PGVs from the North Osaka earthquake are compared with those from the other two earthquakes of identical Mw values of 5.5 but differing focal depths. One of the earthquakes occurred as a shallow crustal event beneath the northeast Kumamoto Prefecture at a focal depth of 7 km on April 16, 2016, at 03:03 local time, and the other as an intraslab earthquake in the subducting Philippine Sea Plate at the focal depth of 43 km on October 31, 2000, at 01:42 local time (Event no. 14 in Table 1). The first event may be an aftershock of the Mw 7.1 Kumamoto earthquake (e.g.,
FIGURE 13

Comparison of the PGAs and PGVs between three events having identical Mw value of 5.5 (F‐net, NIED). A-B: between the North Osaka and northeast Kumamoto Prefecture earthquakes. C-D: between the North Osaka and southern Mie Prefecture earthquakes. The horizontal axes denote the hypocentral distance. The circles, cross marks, and triangles denote the adjusted values by site corrections using equations in Morikawa and Fujiwara (2013) for the events indicated in each panel. See Figure 9(a) for the location of the events. See the text for further explanation.
Similarly, the data from the relatively deep focus (43 km) southern Mie Prefecture earthquake and the North Osaka earthquake are plotted together for PGAs in Figure 13C and for PGVs in Figure 13D, after adjusting for the site corrections. The prediction curves drawn in Figures 13C,D are for the intraslab earthquake category in MF 2013. It can be seen that the data for the southern Mie Prefecture earthquake and the North Osaka earthquakes are generally described well by the prediction curves.
It has been known that the static stress drop generally increases with the increase of focal depths for inland crustal earthquakes (e.g.,
FIGURE 14

Same as in Figures 13A,B for the northeast Kumamoto earthquake, but here the data are grouped into the fore-arc (FA) and back-arc (BA) regions. See the text for further explanation.
Conclusion
PGA, PGV, JMA instrumental intensity and AVRS from 79 damaging moderate magnitude earthquakes were analyzed and presented. It was found that the focal depth and site Vs30 values were significant contributing factors for large values at longer hypocentral distances. At smaller distances (<30 km), considerable overlap was seen between the differing magnitudes producing similar PGA, PGV, and intensities. This overlap exists due to the contributions of both sources and sites. Based on the available literature and the analyzed data, source effects, mostly forward rupture directivity effect was found to produce the large velocity pulses even for the Mw 4 class events. Moderate earthquakes of Mw 4 class can generate an instrumental intensity of 4 or larger at short distances and up to about 80 km from the hypocenter of deeper earthquakes of focal depths 50–60 km. The instrumental intensities were smaller than 4 at distances > about 120 km from these moderate magnitude events. The analysis of residuals for the PGA, PGV, and instrumental intensities based on the GMPEs suggested that the observed values at the small distances are somewhat underestimated by the GMPEs. All the GMPEs used in the analysis were constructed using data from events of Mw ≥ 5.5. The large ground motions reported in the paper for smaller events indicated that it is important to evaluate the ground motion hazards from these smaller events. The long-period ground motions (AVRS) at the periods of 1.6 s–7.8 s are found to be of lower concern at distances over 200 km from the viewpoint of EEW for these moderate magnitude earthquakes. However, at intermediate periods of 1.6–2 s, large AVRS leading to LPGMI of level 4 may be observed at short distances. Comparing the observed data from the North Osaka earthquake with GMPEs and other events suggested that the North Osaka earthquake was probably a higher stress drop event. Also, the complex faulting resulting in double earthquakes very closely separated in time and space resulted in large input motions in wide areas. The sediments further caused amplification leading to the large ground motions in the basin areas.
Statements
Data availability statement
The strong-motion records and PS-logging data were obtained from http://www.kyoshin.bosai.go.jp/. The hypocenter information of the events were taken from https://www.data.jma.go.jp/svd/eqev/data/bulletin/hypo_e.html. The moment magnitude for the first event was taken from https://www.globalcmt.org/, and, for the second event, the moment magnitude was taken from https://www.data.jma.go.jp/svd/eqev/data/bulletin/cmt_e.html. For all the other events, the moment magnitudes were taken from http://www.fnet.bosai.go.jp/event/joho.php?LANG=en. The J-SHIS deep subsurface model was obtained from http://www.j-shis.bosai.go.jp/map/JSHIS2/download.html?lang=en. The list of damaging events was obtained from https://www.data.jma.go.jp/svd/eqev/data/higai/higai1996-new.html. The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary Material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
Author contributions
The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.
Funding
This study was supported by “Advanced Earthquake and Tsunami Forecasting Technologies Project” of NIED and JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP20K05055.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the Japan Meteorological Agency for providing us with hypocenter information for the earthquakes used in this study. I would also like to thank
Conflict of interest
The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Supplementary material
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2021.618400/full#supplementary-material.
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Summary
Keywords
strong-motions, source effect, site amplification, moderate earthquakes, the 2018 North Osaka earthquake, PGA and PGV, JMA seismic intensity scale, long-period ground motions
Citation
Dhakal YP (2021) Strong-Motions From Damaging Moderate Magnitude (5.9 ≥ Mw) Earthquakes in Japan Recorded by K-NET and KiK-net. Front. Earth Sci. 9:618400. doi: 10.3389/feart.2021.618400
Received
16 October 2020
Accepted
11 January 2021
Published
12 February 2021
Volume
9 - 2021
Edited by
Nicola Alessandro Pino, National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), Italy
Reviewed by
Luca Moratto, National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics (Italy), Italy
Nitin Sharma, National Geophysical Research Institute (CSIR), India
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© 2021 Dhakal.
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*Correspondence: Yadab P. Dhakal, ydhakal@bosai.go.jp
This article was submitted to Solid Earth Geophysics, a section of the journal Frontiers in Earth Science
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