Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, Vol. 105, No. 2A, pp. 9931010, April 2015, doi: 10.

1785/0120140209

In Situ Assessment of the G Curve for Characterizing the Nonlinear

Response of Soil: Application to the Garner Valley Downhole
Array and the Wildlife Liquefaction Array
by Johanes Chandra, Philippe Guguen, Jamison H. Steidl, and Luis Fabian Bonilla

Abstract

We analyze the nonlinear and near-surface geological effects of two

Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation at University of California, Santa
Barbara (NEES@UCSB) instrumented sites: the Garner Valley Downhole Array
(GVDA) and the Wildlife Liquefaction Array (WLA). The seismic interferometry by
deconvolution method is applied to earthquake data recorded by the multisensor vertical array between January 2005 and September 2013. Along the cross section, local
shear-wave velocity is extracted by estimating travel time between sensors. The
S-wave velocity profiles are constructed and compared with classical in situ geophysical surveys. We show that velocity values change according to the amplitude of
the ground motion, and we find anisotropy between eastwest and northsouth directions at the GVDA site. The ratio between average peak particle velocity v
and local
S-wave velocity V
S between two boreholes is tested as a deformation proxy. Using
average peak particle acceleration a
, the a
versus v
=V
S curve is used to represent
the stressstrain curve for observing the sites nonlinear responses under different levels of excitation. Nonlinearity is observed from quite low shear-strain levels
(1 105 ) and a classic hyperbolic model is derived. v
=V
S proves to be a good deformation proxy. Finally, the shear modulus degradation curves are constructed for
each depth and test site, and they are similar to previous laboratory measurements
or in situ geophysical surveys. A simple comparison regarding nonlinear behavior
between GVDA and WLA is performed.

Introduction
2003; Tsuda and Steidl, 2006; Wu et al., 2009), the variation
of mode shape (Guguen et al., 2011), or reduction of amplification of the sediment response (Assimaki et al., 2006).
This nonlinear response is mainly driven by the straindependent dynamic parameters of the soil, that is, shear
modulus G and damping D. Variations in these parameters
are the consequence of the increase in shear strain related to
the increase in shear stress that occurs during strong shaking.
G is related to shear stress and shear strain according to
the classical formula  G . For the largest deformation expected during strong ground motion, degradation of
the shear modulus is observed as damping increases. Assuming constant density , this implies that shear-wave velocity
V S decreases with the reduction in shear modulus, through
the relation
p









1
V S  G=:

The effects of near-surface geology have been documented for many previous earthquakes, such as the 1985
Michoacn earthquake (e.g., Campillo et al., 1989; ChvezGarcia and Bard, 1994), the 1989 Loma Prieta, California,
earthquake (Chin and Aki, 1991; Rubinstein and Beroza,
2004), and the 1994 Northridge, California, earthquake (Field
et al., 1997; Beresnev et al., 1998; Hartzell, 1998). One consequence is the amplification of seismic ground motion in
sedimentary sites compared to rock sites, which often has
the maximum amplification at the fundamental frequency
f0 of the soil column and may have a broadband amplification
in the cases of 2D or 3D effects. Under a 1D assumption, f0 of
a sedimentary layer overlaying stiff bedrock depends on the
shear-wave velocity V S and the thickness H of the layer,
and is approximated by f0  V S =4H. For strong ground motion, nonlinear soil response may occur. In this case, the soil
response depends on the strength of the material and the strain
induced by the incoming wavefield. Many authors have reported observations of nonlinear response by examining
changes in f0 (e.g., Beresnev and Wen, 1996; Bonilla et al.,

For earthquake engineering applications involving soil

nonlinearity, the site is generally characterized by establishing the G versus (modulus reduction) curve, using data
993

994
from cyclic laboratory tests that are performed on samples
collected in situ. Based on laboratory tests, Vucetic (1994)
distinguished two different shear-strain thresholds related
to soil nonlinearity: linear cyclic tl and volumetric tv shear
strains. For < tl, the soil behaves in a linear manner; for
tl < < tv , the soil exhibits nonlinear elastic behavior with
negligible permanent deformation; and for > tv, the soil
shows hysteretic nonlinear behavior with permanent deformation. The order of magnitude of tv is around 104 (Hardin and
Black, 1968; Drnevich and Richart, 1970; Dobry and Ladd,
1980) or 2 104 (Youd, 1972; Vucetic, 1994). Using compressional waves, Johnson and Jia (2005) reported the linear
normal strain threshold tl around 1 107 to 5 106 , associated with a Youngs modulus degradation of 5% at a strain
level of 1 106 . Furthermore, Vucetic (1994) observed a
plasticity index dependence on tl , starting around 5 106 .
Because of the lack of in situ data covering a wide range of
strain levels for assessing the G curve, the significance of
laboratory tests compared with in situ conditions is seldom
discussed. In addition, due to the high cost of collecting in
situ vertical array data combined with the time between significant earthquakes, there is a paucity of in situ data to compare with laboratory tests. Finally, the competing effects of
ground-motion amplification (due to the presence of different
impedance contrasts at different depths) and ground-motion
deamplification (due to near-surface nonlinearity) induce further complexity (Archuleta et al., 1992; Bonilla et al., 2011).
An effective solution for observing in situ nonlinear response consists of measuring the shear-wave velocity variation under different levels of excitation (Haskell, 1953;
Ohmachi et al., 2011; Dobry, 2013). Using a vertical array
having a series of accelerometers located at different depths,
the measurement of the waves arrival time provides an estimation of V S , assuming the soil column undergoes shear deformation. The classical methods to compute these velocities
use cross-correlation analysis (Rubinstein and Beroza, 2004;
Rubinstein and Beroza, 2005) and cross-spectral analysis
(Coutant, 1996). Recently, the seismic interferometry by deconvolution method has been successfully applied (Mehta
et al., 2007; Sawazaki et al., 2009; Nakata and Snieder, 2012;
Pech et al., 2012) to detect very small changes in velocity. In
addition, the representation of soil nonlinearity by the G
curve also relies on the measurement of deformation directly
estimated by relative displacement between the borehole sensors (e.g., Zeghal and Elgamal, 1994).
This study was designed to test the efficiency of noninvasive assessment of the nonlinear response of a site, applied to the Garner Valley Downhole Array (GVDA) and the
Wildlife Liquefaction Array (WLA) test sites at moderate
or strong strain levels. For that, a proxy of the stressstrain
relationships is proposed by computing the ratio between the
average peak particle velocity and the equivalent-linear
shear-wave velocity, as used for example by Hill et al. (1993)
and Idriss (2011) and validated on synthetic results and centrifuge tests by Chandra et al. (2014). The description of the
GVDA and WLA test sites and the data selection criteria used

J. Chandra, P. Guguen, J. H. Steidl, and L. F. Bonilla

in this study are presented in the first part. The seismic interferometry by deconvolution method is then applied to the
vertical arrays, and the shear-wave velocity (V S ) profiles are
obtained, along with the variation of V S with respect to the
level of shaking. Finally, the stressstrain relationship is acquired through the wave-based nonlinear proxy PGV=V S
(PGV is peak ground velocity) for strain, and the in situ nonlinear response is discussed in the last section.

The Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation

at University of California, Santa Barbara for the
GVDA and WLA Test Sites
The GVDA and the WLA are part of the George E. Brown,
Jr., Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation at the
University of California, Santa Barbara (NEES@UCSB).
The GVDA test site (3340.127N, 11640.427W) is situated
in a valley within the Peninsular Ranges batholith, 23 km east
of Hemet and 20 km southwest of Palm Springs, California. It
is located 7 km and 35 km from the San Jacinto fault (SJF) and
the San Andreas fault (SAF), respectively. The SJF is historically the most active strike-slip fault in the SAF system, with a
slip rate of 10 mm=yr, and the southern SAF is an active
fault with a slip rate of 25 mm=yr.
The WLA test site (3305.843N, 11531.827W) is situated in Californias Imperial Valley on the west bank of the
Alamo River, 13 km north of Brawley and 160 km east of San
Diego. It is located southeast of the southernmost terminus of
the SAF. For more extensive details on these sites, readers are
referred to Youd, Bartholomew, Proctor (2004), Steidl and
Seale (2010), Steidl et al. (2012, 2014), and the NEES@UCSB
website (see Data and Resources). The locations of GVDA and
WLA test sites are shown in Figure 1.
The GVDA near-surface geological conditions consist of
soft alluvial lake deposits to a depth of 1825 m overlaying
weathered granite (Fig. 2a). The cross section of GVDA
shows multiple impedance contrasts at several depths, resulting in a complex amplification of ground motion. The fundamental frequency is around 1.7 Hz (Archuleta et al., 1992;
Steidl et al., 1996; Theodulidis et al., 1996; Bonilla et al.,
2002), and several higher resonance frequencies exist at 3,
6, 8, and 12 Hz. According to Pecker (1995) and Bonilla et al.
(2002), we assumed a 1D model of the site. Furthermore,
Coutant (1996) and Bonilla et al. (2002) detected velocity
anisotropy in the shallow layers, confirming the complexity
of the site in terms of seismic response. In situ surveys have
been performed, providing an extensive description of the
site in terms of geotechnical and geophysical characteristics
(Pecker and Mohammadioun, 1991; Archuleta et al., 1992;
Gariel et al., 1993; Pecker, 1995; Steidl et al., 1998; Youd,
Bartholomew, Proctor, 2004; NEES@UCSB website, see
Data and Resources). The shear-wave velocity ranges from
90 m=s in the uppermost layer to 3500 m=s at the bottom
(500 m depth). Stokoe and Darendeli (1998) performed laboratory tests to extract the G curve of the surficial sediments; these results will be used as a reference for our

In situ Assessment of the G Curve for Characterizing the Nonlinear Response of Soil

Figure 1.

995

Test site location (source: Google maps, see Data and Resources).

Figure 2. Geotechnical cross section of (a) the Garner Valley

Downhole Array (GVDA) and (b) the Wildlife Liquefaction Array
(WLA) test sites, including the position of the accelerometers used
in this study (black squares).

analysis. Moreover, Lawrence et al. (2008) studied the nonlinear response of GVDA using induced vibration with acceleration of more than 1g. By inverting the dispersion curves,
they observed the greatest change in S-wave velocity nearest
the surface (up to a depth of 4 m) related to the nonlinear
response of the uppermost layers. Since its installation in
1989, GVDAs instrumentation has been upgraded and enhanced several times (Steidl et al., 2012). In this study, we
consider data recorded using the most recent configuration,
which was updated in 2004. The seismic vertical array consists of seven accelerometers located at ground level (GL)-0 m
and at GL-6, GL-15, GL-22, GL-50, GL-150, and GL-501 m.
Data from these accelerometers are collected using continuous
data acquisition at 200 samples per second, transmitted back
to UCSB in real time, and archived.
The WLA test site was first instrumented in 1982. The
near-surface geology of this site consists of a layer of saturated silty sand of around 27 m in between silty clay layers
(Fig. 2b). The presence of the sandy layer in addition to a
shallow water table at around 1.2 m render the site liquefiable, as observed from field evidence during regional earthquakes (e.g., 1979 M w 6.5 Imperial Valley earthquake; 1981
Mw 5.9 Westmorland earthquake), and from instrumental
evidence of liquefaction or strain hardening (Bonilla et al.,
2005) during the 1987 Mw 6.6 Superstition Hills earthquake.
No data on the bedrock are available at this site. In 2002,
20 yrs after the site was first instrumented, the original sensors

996

J. Chandra, P. Guguen, J. H. Steidl, and L. F. Bonilla

failed and the datalogger became obsolete. New instrumentation was deployed 65 m north of the original site under the
NEES program in 2004 and is now operated by UCSB. The
current vertical array, used in this study, is composed of six
accelerometers at GL-0, GL-2.5, GL-5.5, GL-7.7, GL-30, and
GL-100 m (Fig. 2b). Information from geophysical surveys
has been reported by Cox (2006), providing shear-wave velocity ranging from 100 m=s at the surface to 300 m=s at the bottom (100 m depth).
In total, data from 5080 events with magnitudes ranging
from 1:0 M L 5:5 were recorded during January 2005 to
September 2013 from the GVDA test site, and data from 8515
events with magnitudes ranging from 1:0 M L 5:5 were
collected from WLA test site during the same period. Hypocentral distances vary from 1 to 100 km for both sites. The
recorded data are mostly from weak to moderate events, with
peak ground acceleration (PGA) of 0:12g and 0:30g for GVDA
and WLA, respectively. For all of the events used in this study,
the observed pore pressure data showed that liquefaction has
not occurred.

Deconvolution Method
The seismic interferometry by deconvolution method is
applied to the selected data for the assessment of shear-wave
velocity. Seismic interferometry obtains the Greens function
by cross correlating the seismic motion between different
receivers, thus removing the propagation from the source
to the first receiver (Wapenaar et al., 2010). Instead of using
single cross correlation, Snieder and afak (2006) proposed
the seismic interferometry by deconvolution method for application to buildings assuming a 1D shear model. By deconvolving these waves, the causal and acausal propagation of
waves within the system is obtained, as well as a better estimation of the arrival times and amplitudes (Clayton and
Wiggins, 1976). Depending on the frequency content of the
signal, in some cases a mixture of upward and downward
deconvolved waves is unavoidable in the uppermost layers.
Assuming the soil to be a shear deformation system, several
authors (Mehta et al., 2007; Nakata and Snieder, 2012, Pech
et al., 2012) have applied this method to vertical soil profiles
to extract the shear-wave velocity. They monitored small variations of V S related to environmental changes or seismic
shaking levels.
We deconvolved the earthquake record at each downhole instrument within the soil profile with the GL-0 m record. The response of the deconvolved waves Di0m  is
computed as
Di0m  

Ai A
0m 
;
jA0m j2 

2

in which Ai  is the ith wavefield in the frequency domain

recorded at receiver i, A0m  is the reference signal at GL0 m, is the angular frequency,
is the complex conjugate
symbol, and (set at 10% of the average spectral power) is

the stabilization parameter to avoid instability caused by

deconvolution (Clayton and Wiggins, 1976). Having computed Di0m , travel time between each receiver t is obtained by the inverse Fourier transformation of Di0m ,
and the equivalent linear shear-wave velocity V
S is obtained
as V
S  h=t, in which h is the distance between
receivers.

Data Processing
An initial data selection is made from the GVDA and
WLA databases, taking only events recorded at all accelerometers in the two horizontal directions (eastwest and north
south) with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) greater than 3 for
frequency bands between 0.1 and the Shannon frequency
(i.e., 100 Hz). These criteria give 401 and 1066 recordings
at GVDA and 7146 and 6864 recordings at WLA for the east
west and northsouth directions, respectively. The data has
been rotated to true north by the standard NEES@UCSB
processing procedures for the borehole sensors that are not
already aligned north (GVDA sensors GL-6, GL-15, GL-22,
GL-50). We use the complete records collected from the
NEES@UCSB database, including P and S waves without
applying magnitude criteria and allowing the time window
to vary 72252 s, depending on the original data available
at the NEES@UCSB website. Before deconvolution, the
mean and trend of the data were removed, a 5% Tukey tapering function was applied, and zero-padding was applied up
to 216 samples. Finally, we applied a third-order Butterworth
filter between 0.510 Hz and 0.520 Hz for GVDA and WLA,
respectively, which is large enough to ensure accurate traveltime estimation (Todorovska and Rahmani, 2013) and covers
the fundamental frequency of the sites. Having computed the
deconvolution, the inverse Fourier transform of the Di0m
(equation 2) is resampled 80 times using a polyphase implementation to increase the accuracy of the automatic traveltime picking.
Three typical examples of deconvolved waves are shown
in Figure 3, corresponding to three earthquakes recorded at
GVDA in the eastwest direction: (a) a weak earthquake (9
June 2006, ML 1.24, and R  23:88 km); (b) a moderate
earthquake (9 February 2007, M L 4.73, and R  74:8 km);
and (c) the strongest earthquake (7 July 2010, ML 5.43, and
R  32:53 km). For the first event (Fig. 3a), the deconvolved
data at GL-150 m resulted in an erroneous estimation of V
S at
this level due to sensor malfunction. In addition, one horizontal component is no longer functioning at GL-501 m, which
affects both components because the rotation to true north and
east is no longer valid. For the second and third events
(Fig. 3b,c), we obtain clear traveling waves. Interferometry
by deconvolution produces a virtual source that excites the
system at t  0 (Snieder and afak, 2006), with causal and
acausal waves referring to the waves in the positive and negative times, respectively. The waveforms in Figure 3b,c are
almost symmetric in time; and, as shown by Nakata and
Snieder (2012), the estimated velocity in the positive or

In situ Assessment of the G Curve for Characterizing the Nonlinear Response of Soil

997

Figure 3. Three typical examples of interferograms of deconvolved waves for GVDA eastwest data recorded at GL-0, GL-6, GL-15, GL22, GL-50, GL-150, and GL-501 m. (a) 9 June 2006 M L 1.24, R  23:88 earthquake. (b) 9 February 2007 M L 4.73, R  74:8 km earthquake. (c) 7 July 2010 M L 5.43, R  32:53 km earthquake.
negative parts provides similar values. In this study, we estimate the equivalent linear velocity by automatic picking of
arrival times at each sensor applied to the GVDA and WLA
event databases. The arrival time is selected using the maximum amplitude of the pulse in the negative (acausal) interferometry at each sensor depth. For the second event
(Fig. 3b), because the upward and downward waves overlap
in the uppermost layer, we cannot pick their arrival accurately. For the third event (Fig. 3c), the wave arrival time cannot be picked accurately at the bottom (GL-501 m), where
only one horizontal component is functioning. This sensor is
removed from our analysis. These three typical examples are
also found for WLA recordings.
To overcome the problem shown in Figure 3a related to
sensor malfunction, we run a manual check and removed all
the data producing this error. To limit the artificial time-delay
or the picking inaccuracy due to the lack of separation between the upward and downward waves at close sensor spacing near the surface, the GL-6 m sensor at GVDA and the
GL-2.5 and GL-5.5 m sensors at WLA are not used in our
analysis. The GL-501 m sensor at GVDA is also not used, as
previously mentioned, and the analysis focuses on the uppermost layers between the GL-0 and GL-150 m sensors at
GVDA and the GL-0 and GL-100 m sensors at WLA. The
resulting usable event databases considered in this study correspond to 368 eastwest and 956 northsouth events for
GVDA and 6461 eastwest and 6012 northsouth events
for WLA (Fig. 4). In Figure 4, the data truncated at lower
magnitude are the result of the preselection carried out by
NEES@UCSB to consider the most relevant ground motion
for earthquake and geotechnical engineering applications.
This truncation is due to the fact that the NEES@UCSB team
does not segment out events from the continuous data when
the magnitude is small and the distance is large, as the SNR
ratio is assumed to be insufficient.

Velocity Profile and Site Anisotropy

The seismic interferometry by deconvolution process is
applied to the overall dataset selected for northsouth and
eastwest recordings, and the velocity profiles for GVDA and
WLA are shown (Fig. 5), considering eastwest and north
south directions separately. The results are compared with reference velocity profiles proposed by Stellar (1996) at GVDA
and Cox (2006) at WLA. In our case, V
S is computed between
two sensors in the vertical array, smoothing the velocity contrasts found by Stellar (1996) and Cox (2006). This is why
we also show the average V S profile (avg in Fig. 5) derived
from the references, assuming constant V S between each of
the vertical array sensors used at each site.
At GVDA (Fig. 5a), the results are compared with the
velocity profile provided by Stellar (1996) from suspension
log results. In the uppermost layers (GL-0to GL-50 m), our
results provide a good match with the reference velocity
profile, with V
S equal to 175260 m=s from the surface
to GL-15 m, between 175 and 500 m=s from GL-15 to
GL-22 m, and 400700 m=s between GL-22 and GL-50 m.
Differences are observed below GL-100 m (V
S between 900
and 1300 m=s) due to the interface between the weathered
granite (V S 400700 m=s) and crystalline bedrock
(V S 3000 m=s) between 90 and 110 m, and the lack of suspension log data beyond 94 m in Stellar (1996) since the drilling encountered the crystalline bedrock. At WLA (Fig. 5b),
our results match the reference velocity profile provided by
Cox (2006) quite well, with V
S equal to 100170 m=s from
the surface down to GL-7.7 m, between 170 and 230 m=s
from GL-7.7 to GL-30 m, and 265300 m=s between
GL-30 and GL-100 m.
Depending on the earthquake, V
S profiles show variability at the two sites and in each layer. At WLA, the variability
is largest in the uppermost layers. On the contrary, the GVDA
test site manifests an inverse trend, where the variability

998

J. Chandra, P. Guguen, J. H. Steidl, and L. F. Bonilla

Figure 4. Distribution of the data selected for this study, displayed as function of magnitude and distance (left) and magnitude and peak
ground acceleration (PGA) (right) in the (a) eastwest and (b) northsouth components.

Figure 5. Velocity profiles computed by seismic interferometry (in gray) for (a) the GVDA site and (b) the WLA site, using eastwest (left)
and northsouth (right) horizontal recordings. The dotted black lines correspond to the original velocity profiles from Stellar (1996) and Cox
(2006) for the GVDA and WLA sites, respectively. Solid black lines represent their equivalent averaged velocity profiles derived from the
original profile and considering the position of the ground level (GL) sensors.
seems to be largest in the lowermost layers. Therefore, we
found that our a priori knowledge of the nonlinear response
of sites, assuming the strongest nonlinear effects near the surface of the soil column, might not manifest in all the cases.

We also observe velocity anisotropy between eastwest and

northsouth directions at GVDA regardless of the layer, as
previously reported by Coutant (1996) and Bonilla et al.
(2002). In these studies, anisotropy at GVDA is observed

In situ Assessment of the G Curve for Characterizing the Nonlinear Response of Soil

Figure 6.

999

Variation of anisotropy a% at different depths, displayed as a function of the v
=V
S ratio at (a) the GVDA site and (b) the

WLA site.

between GL-22 and GL-220 m and seems to persist in the

upper layers (GL0-22 m) despite data dispersion, thus avoiding a definitive conclusion. One possible explanation is that
the fast and slow axis in the deeper layers (weathered granite
and granite) had to do with the preferred fracture orientation
related to the tectonic stress field. This would likely be less
prevalent in the soil than in the rock, as supported by our
results and those of Coutant (1996). The origin of the anisotropy may also be related to the inhomogenous properties of
the soil between two sensors, but for classical geophysical
and geotechnical surveys, the differences between eastwest
and northsouth direction reflects different soil properties in
both directions. In Figure 5a, the interferometry profile in the
northsouth direction below GL-50 m shows results centered
on values above the reference profile at 1000 m=s, whereas in
the eastwest direction, velocity profiles are centered below
1000 m=s. The same observations are possible in the upper-

most layers. According to Coutant (1996), the percentage of

anisotropy can be computed along the GVDA and WLA profiles as the difference of travel time between both horizontal
directions, expressed in velocity in our case as
a% 

V
SNS V
SEW
:
V
SNS

3

In Figure 6, anisotropy is plotted as a function of the

average peak particle velocity v
recorded by the two sensors
bordering each layer and the local shear-wave velocity V
S
computed by interferometry in each layer. As proposed by
Chandra et al. (2014), and discussed later in this study, this
ratio provides a proxy for strain and will be used as a nonlinear
criterion. At GVDA, we observe anisotropy variations at depth
(Fig. 6a), consistent with the values provided by Coutant
(1996), especially for depths below 22 m. Anisotropy occurs

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J. Chandra, P. Guguen, J. H. Steidl, and L. F. Bonilla

at all depth levels, equal to 4.5% between GL-0 and GL-15 m

and to 5:6% between GL-15 and GL-22 m. The strongest
values are found between GL-22 and GL-50 m, where they
are equal to 10.19%, and they are 6.67% below GL-50 m. At
WLA (Fig. 6b), no strong anisotropy is observed, the maximum value being equal to 1.78% between GL-7.7 and
GL-30 m and less than 1% otherwise. Furthermore, regardless of depth and site, no variation of anisotropy is observed
with respect to v
=V
S , which suggests that, at least for the set
of data used in this study, there is no relationship between the
anisotropy and the level of deformation.
The stability of the V S and the good correlation when
compared with V S profiles from other studies (Stellar, 1996;
Cox, 2006) support the conclusion that the method allows a
good estimation of V S in situ. Therefore, this method can be
applied to detect changes in elastic properties during earthquake shaking in relation to the level of strain and nonlinearity.

respective depths of sensors i and j. Velocities and displacements were calculated by integrating and double integrating
acceleration following the procedure proposed by Boore
(2005). This method implicitly transforms the signals to have
the same length by applying zero-padding before filtering
and integration. To compute the stress and strain in each
layer, several options can be considered, depending on
whether the maximum strain is assumed to arrive (or not) at
the same time as maximum displacement uzj t and uzi t
and maximum velocity. Hence, in our study, we test two solutions for computing shear strain using displacement-based
methods and three definitions of maximum particle velocity.
The first strain value DB1 is computed as the absolute
value of the average maximum displacement between two
sensors zi and zj divided by the distance (zj zi ):


maxuzj t  maxuzi t 
:
DB1  

z z 
j

Assessment of Nonlinear Site Behavior

Assuming shear stress as the spatial derivative of PGA
following  PGA z, and the displacement-based shear
strain DB as the derivative of the displacement following:
DB 

du du=dt PGV


;
dz dz=dt
VS

4

PGA versus PGV=V S is considered herein as the representation

of the stressstrain relationships that can be used to test the nonlinear susceptibility of a site under seismic loading. PGA versus
PGV=V S was previously introduced as a stressstrain proxy
based on wave propagation by Hill et al. (1993), Rathje et al.
(2004), and Cox et al. (2009). Idriss (2011) proposed a stress
strain proxy using the PGV=V S30 ratio, in which V S30 is the
average shear-wave velocity in the upper 30 m, commonly
used in seismic-code site classification schemes. The efficiency of this proxy has been successfully demonstrated
by Idriss (2011) on Next Generation Attenuation datasets,
De Martin et al. (2012) on KiK-net data, and Chandra et al.
(2014) on K-NET and KiK-net data. Because we use an estimation of V
S , in this study the peak ground accelerations
and velocities along the borehole are replaced by the average
peak particle velocity v
and average peak acceleration a

recorded between each pair of sensors. For all the strain computations, we assumed homogeneity of the soil layer between
two successive sensors in the vertical array.
To test the validity of the plane shear-wave propagation
proxy for strain, v
=V
S is first compared with the displacement-based shear strain DB calculated by:

DB  ZZij 

duz uzj t uzi t


;
zj zi 
dz

5

in which zzij is the vertical deformation between two successive sensors i and j, uzi and uzj represent horizontal displacement at points i and j, respectively, and zi and zj are the

6

The second strain value DB2 is computed as the maximum

relative displacement as follows:
DB2



uzj t uzi t 

 :
 max 

zj zi 

7

Simultaneously, the maximum particle velocities v1 , v
, and

v3 are computed as the average value of the maximum velocities V in a layer between sensors i and j (equation 8), the
maximum absolute value of velocity (equation 9), and the absolute average velocity (equation 10) at the time corresponding to the maximum strain DB2 , respectively:

v1 


maxvi t  maxvj t
;
2



vi t  vj t 

 ;
v  max 

2



vi t  t DB2   vj t  t DB2  

:
v3  

2

8

9

10

Figure 7 displays the comparison between displacement-based strain ( DB1 and DB2 ) and wave-based strain
represented by the proxy v
=V
S (Fig. 7a), as well as the distribution of the residual values (Fig. 7b). We observe a slight
dispersion of the data around the 1:1 line shown on Figure 7a.
The lowest residual values are obtained considering v
=V
S .
Rathje et al. (2004) reported that shear strain computed using
plane shear-wave propagation overpredicts displacementbased shear strain. In our case, as shown in the residual distribution (Fig. 7b), the v
=V
S strain proxy underpredicts the
displacement-based strain: the mean and standard deviation
values of the residues are 4:78 107 6:34 106
and 1:66 107 4:71 106 at GVDA and WLA,

In situ Assessment of the G Curve for Characterizing the Nonlinear Response of Soil

1001

Figure 7. (a) Comparison and (b) residual values of displacement-based strain and wave-based strain proxies at the GVDA and WLA test
sites. (left) DB1 versus v1 =V
S , (middle) DB2 versus v
=V
S , and (right) DB2 versus v3 =V
S (see equations 610 for definition).
respectively. These values are very small and v
=V
S may be
therefore considered as the strain proxy in this study. To be
consistent with this definition, we also defined accelerationbased shear stress, a
used for the stressstrain curve as


at  aj t 
 :
a
 max 

2

11

V
S

may change during loading due to the nonlinear response of

the soil layers and the equivalent-linear strain, v
=V
S , along
the borehole might change with the amplitude of the loading
represented herein by a
. The nonlinear response can be studied
at various depths along the vertical array, thanks to shallow and
intermediate-depth strain (i.e., between two successive sensors).
Finally, the a
versus v
=V
S results are inverted to fit the
classic two-parameters nonlinear hyperbolic model proposed
by Seed et al. (1984) and Ishihara (1996):


G0
;
1  r

12

in which G0 (or Gmax ) is the initial/maximum shear modulus

and r is the reference strain that is the ratio between maximum shear stress max and maximum shear modulus Gmax .
An equivalent shear modulus degradation can be obtained

2
using V
2
S =V S0 to represent G=G0 . The nonlinear model is
derived from equation (12) by

G
1

:
G0 1  00

13

Finally, a function of the nonlinear representation is fitted to

our results, derived from equation (13) as
y

ax
;
1  ab x

14

in which y and x correspond to shear stress (i.e., a
) and

shear strain (i.e., v
=V
S ), respectively, and a and b are the
initial shear modulus G0 and shear strength a
0 , respectively.
In the rest of this article, only the hyperbolic model was used
to fit data, based on physical justification of the geotechnical
models and considered valid from low to large strain levels.

Results and Discussion

To evaluate the validity of the v
=V
S strain proxy, we
plot the variation of the proxy with respect to acceleration
(i.e., the a
v
=V
S curve) for the GVDA (Fig. 8a) and WLA
(Fig. 8b) test sites. Figure 9 shows an enlargement of Figure 8
to display the results in a small strain area. V
S ; v
, and a

values are computed in each layer and for all events. In addition, the degradation of local V
S along the borehole with
strain (v
=V
S ) is studied. In these figures, assuming that a

represents shear stress, the curve can be considered as equivalent to the in situ stressstrain curve. Because of the degradation of shear-wave velocity during the earthquake, data

1002
are grouped according to the value of V S30 found in Eurocode
8 (2003). The average velocity in each layer V
S is obtained
by deconvolution and thus accounts for the degradation of
the S-wave velocity with respect to strain. We also group
the data in terms of magnitude to introduce the possible consideration of source effects, associated, for example, with the
frequency content of the waveforms recorded along the borehole, rather than only considering the peak values. Finally,
we consider the engineering representation of the stress
strain curve, PGA versus PGV=V
S30 for all events (where PGA
and PGV represent acceleration and velocity at GL-0 m for
northsouth and eastwest directions), and V
S30 is the average velocity over the 30 m depth layer computed from the
equivalent linear shear-wave velocity V
S. Figures 8 and 9
show the nonlinear behavior of the GVDA and WLA sites by
fitting the hyperbolic model (equation 13) to the data: as for
all theoretical nonlinear stressstrain curves, for a certain
level of strain corresponding to the yield point, the slope of
the curve decreases up to a horizontal line.
It is not clear at which strain level the nonlinearity starts.
Nevertheless, we observed nonlinearity appears at GVDA at
2:5 105 in the eastwest direction and at 1 105 in the
northsouth direction for the 180 < V S < 360 soil class.
Few data at large strain are available; however, as shown
by Chandra et al. (2014) using K-Net and KiK-net Japanese
data, nonlinearity seems to be directly related to the velocity
class. In fact the equivalent stiffest (V S > 800 m=s) and softest (180 < V S < 360 m=s) soils border the nonlinear models
at GVDA (180 < V S < 360) and WLA (V S < 180 m=s). During shaking, the degradation of V
S can be directly related to
acceleration and strain. As a result of the V
S computed in
each layer and taking into account the shear degradation during shaking (not only from the elastic V S profile provided by
in situ survey), the strain proxy (v
=V
S ) points out the in situ
nonlinear behavior of the soil: the hyperbolic models for the
stiffest soil are more linear compared with the softest soil
models. If we consider V
S30 as the proxy and PGV as Idriss
(2011) did, we observe the hyperbolic model smooths the
strain between the classes of soils at GVDA and WLA, averaging the stiffest and the softest soil hyperbolic models.
At GVDA the V
S30 hyperbolic model fits the data according
to the magnitude level, as expected from the strongest acceleration. The same observation is made at WLA, for ML < 5:5
events. No clear dependence on magnitude is seen when
ML < 5:5 and M L < 5:5 classes of events are compared, as the
strongest nonlinear effect is not always apparent for the strongest
events. With WLA ML < 5:5 data, for instance, several larger
magnitude events give smaller values of v
=V
S for equivalent
acceleration with smaller magnitude inside the same class of soil
(e.g., the last two circles on the right side of Fig. 8b that correspond to the largest strain). Glis and Bonilla (2012) discussed
the frequency dependence of the nonlinearity. At WLA (Fig. 8b),
for the largest magnitude events (M L < 5:5, square), a
v
=V
S
(without soil classification; dashed line) shows greater nonlinearity compared with lower magnitude event. These ML < 5:5
events correspond to distant large events, such as the 4 April

J. Chandra, P. Guguen, J. H. Steidl, and L. F. Bonilla

2010 El Mayor earthquake (M L 7:2, distance of 99.93 km)

and 15 June 2010 event (M L 5:7, distance of 77.43 km). The
PGA on the site reached only 0:12g and 0:07g for the April
2010 and June 2010 events, respectively. Nevertheless, these
events produced a moderate strain.
The coefficient of correlation R is provided in Figure 8. The
R value ranges from 0 to 1, in which 1 represents a perfect correlation between the fit and the data. The R value is computed as
s











































Pn
2
i1 yi yfiti 
;
15
R 1 P
n y y
2

i1 i
in which n is the number of data, yi is the data of the dependent
variable, yfiti is the vector values of the fit, and y is the mean
value of the dependent variable. For example, R values for PGA
versus PGV=V S30 fit are 0.9917 and 0.9804 for GVDA and
0.9615 and 0.9614 for WLA in the northsouth and eastwest
directions, respectively. Despite the lack of large strain values,
the high values of R show a good estimation of the nonlinear
hyperbolic model using the strain proxy (PGV=V S30 or v
=V
S )
derived from in situ data.
Finally, as shown in Figure 6, we observe (Fig. 10a) differences in the hyperbolic models used in the two horizontal directions at GVDA for equivalent deformation, contrary to WLA
(Fig. 10b). These differences might suggest anisotropy of soil
nonlinearity, as also supported by the V
S values (Fig. 6a), but
the lack of data at large strain does not allow definitive conclusions on this effect. The anisotropy issue may raise some questions about the velocity profile derived from in situ geotechnical
or geophysical surveys, usually performed in one direction and
considered for nonlinear analysis of the site response. Moreover, starting from the elastic velocity given by classical geophysical and/or geotechnical surveys, the in situ nonlinear
response of the site may be underestimated because the degradation of V
S with the level of shaking is not taken into account.
Finally, in Figure 10c, a simple comparison of the GVDA and
WLA sites shows that even for the eastwest direction (showing
less nonlinearity at the GVDA site), the nonlinear response
seems to start at a lower strain value compared to the WLA site,
which must be confirmed in the future with higher strain data.
Because v
=V
S represents strain, one interesting solution to define the in situ nonlinear response of the site is to
derive the shear modulus degradation with respect to the
strain (i.e., the so-called G curve) from the site data. Using
this method, it is possible to obtain the nonlinear curves at
different depths. However, we have no direct value for G and
have only the V S value. Nevertheless, by discerning the relation between V
S and G (equation 1), the G=G0 value can be
substituted by V 2S =V 2S0 (equation 13). V S0 is defined as the
average shear-wave velocity corresponding to the smallest
deformation for which a linear response is expected, that
is, between 5 108 and 5 107 of strain. The V S degradation analysis is carried out at different depths, and the data
is inverted to fit the model according to equation (14).
Figures 11 and 12 display the V 2S =V 2S0 variation according to the v
=V
S proxy computed in the (a) eastwest and

In situ Assessment of the G Curve for Characterizing the Nonlinear Response of Soil

1003

Figure 8.

Equivalent stress (a
) strain (v
=V
S ) results at (a) GVDA and (b) WLA test sites in the (left) eastwest and (right) northsouth
directions, color-ranked according to the Eurocode 8 (2003) V S30 -based site classification. The type of symbol represents the v
=V
S proxy
computed using M L < 5:5 (circle) or ML < 5:5 (square) events. The size of the symbol is proportional to the rank of magnitude. The triangles
correspond to the v
=V
S30 strain proxy. Solid lines represent the hyperbolic models (equation 13) fitted to data by V S rank. The dashed line at
WLA is the hyperbolic model for ML < 5:5 data regardless of V S due to the small number of events. The x- and y-axis scales for GVDA are
different in the north and east directions.

(b) northsouth directions for the GVDA and WLA test sites,
respectively. The smallest deformation shows the largest discrepancy of data, but overall the figures show rather limited
scattering. As expected, the uppermost layers exhibit stronger
nonlinear behavior than the deeper layers. In the uppermost

layers, we found that nonlinear behavior starts at a very

low level of deformation (1 105 ) and corresponds to the
cyclic tl threshold, becoming more significant above the tv
threshold (1 104 ). For example, G degradation starts at a
level of strain equal to 1 106 and 2 106 at GVDA for the

1004

J. Chandra, P. Guguen, J. H. Steidl, and L. F. Bonilla

Figure 9.

Enlarged view of Figure 8 for strain level up to 2 105 and 2:7 104 , for (a) GVDA and (b) WLA, respectively (different
scale). For legends, see Figure 8.

northsouth and eastwest directions between GL-0 and

GL-15 m and at 1 105 at WLA in both directions. Comparing the different depths at each site, we observe an increase in
the strain threshold for the nonlinear response (i.e., shift of the
fitted model to the largest deformation), in accordance with the
fact that the lowermost layers are less nonlinear. As discussed
previously, the degradation of G is much more sensitive to the
strongest PGA (circles) than to the strongest magnitudes (size

of the symbols), as systematically observed at the WLA site,

confirming that magnitude is not sufficient as a parameter to
reflect the possibility of an event to generate nonlinearity.
This is understandable because a large magnitude event
could generate a low intensity level due to the distance. Conversely, a small magnitude event could produce a large intensity value due to the proximity between the source and
the site. Even though nonlinearity is less present at greater

In situ Assessment of the G Curve for Characterizing the Nonlinear Response of Soil

1005

Figure 10.

PGAPGV=V
S30 data for (a) GVDA, (b) WLA, and (c) comparison between both sites. The solid and dashed lines are the
hyperbolic model fitted to the data for the east (circle) and north (triangle) direction data, respectively.

depths, nonlinear response is also observed: for example, at

3 106 of strain between GL-15 and GL-22 m at GVDA or
at 1 105 of strain between GL-7.7 and GL-30 m at WLA.
Although the data are not sufficient, we observe a slight nonlinear trend in the fitted curve below 30 m, suggesting that
nonlinearity may occur at depth, even for moderate deformations generated by moderate earthquakes.
Stokoe and Darandeli (1998) performed laboratory resonant column and torsional shear tests on samples extracted
at GL-3.5, GL-6.5, GL-27, and GL-41.3 m at the GVDA test
site and provided the G curve. The laboratory tests are
compared in Table 1 with the degradation values found using
vertical arrays in this study. Furthermore, the curves at different depths are given for comparison in Figures 11 and 12,
with the average strain computed for different ranks of strain
(average value standard deviation in red).
For larger deformations (1 104 to 1 105 ), our results
match very well with laboratory measurements, whatever the
depth. Scattering of results may be due to the smaller number
of events having a statistical representation of strain and degradation or to the natural variability of the nonlinear response for
different types of seismic loading. Because the laboratory tests
were performed considering only cyclic loading, we can also
assume that the sites nonlinear response may depend on
ground-motion characteristics, producing real in situ uncertainties concerning the dynamic response and not included in laboratory-induced curves. This also applies to the consideration of
anisotropy, which is not provided by in situ classical surveys.
Cox (2006) performed in situ dynamic loading tests at
three different locations of the WLA test site. In this study, we
compare our results with his results at test location C (Cox,
2006), for which more information is available. Two dynamic
loading experiments with multiple loading stages were carried
out for his study using T-Rex apparatus to apply dynamic shear
load to the surface array. The comparison of the results is
shown in Figure 12 only at the first 7.7 m depth measurement
because noninvasive methods are available for the uppermost
layers. Our results for the WLA test site match the Cox (2006)
results very well for the shallowest layer. At the WLA test site,

the degradation modulus may be the result of both the nonlinear behavior of the site and the pore water pressure generated (Cox, 2006), as indeed the largest event at WLA has
excess pore pressure generation (Ru), with the largest having
a 60% Ru value (Steidl et al., 2014). In this study, however,
pore water pressure generation is not discussed. It is also
important to note that nonlinearity does not occur only at
shallow depth, but also in the lowermost layers, at strain of
1 104 . Therefore, generation of nonlinearity is not restricted
to levels only near the surface. However, this is rarely investigated due to the difficulty of extracting samples at greater depths
and of reproducing the in situ stress level in the laboratory.
Finally, Figure 13 shows a comparison of the results
from the two test sites. Because the site characteristics are
different, we use the strain parameter PGV=V
S30 to compare
the behavior between the two sites. Shear modulus degradation is represented by V
S30 =V
S30 max, in which V
S30 corresponds to the average particle velocity computed using v

between GL-0 and GL-30 m and V
S30 max corresponds to the
average V
S30 for the smallest deformation at which a linear
response is expected (i.e., between 5 108 and 5 107 of
strain). Despite the fact that liquefaction is expected at WLA,
with the data collected at GVDA so far, nonlinear behavior
nonetheless appears to start at a lower strain level than at
WLA. Because GVDA has not suffered significant deformation, and has had many fewer events above 1 105 , this is
preventing us from being able to compare the results for the
highest levels of deformation. Once again, we observe that
both v
=V
S and PGV=V S30 are reliable proxies for predicting
nonlinearity, the degradation of the equivalent shear modulus
being related to the increased values of the proxy.
In Figure 13, we also plot the volumetric strain tv 
1 104 (Hardin and Black, 1968; Drnevich and Richart, 1970;
Dobry and Ladd, 1980) and linear strain tl  1 106 (Vucetic, 1994; Johnson and Jia, 2005). The nonlinear response
close to 1 106 and corresponding to the cyclic strain is less
visible compared to those in Figures 11 and 12, because corresponding PGV (rather than v
) and V
S30 (rather than intermediate depth V
S ) smooth the results and do not represent the

1006

J. Chandra, P. Guguen, J. H. Steidl, and L. F. Bonilla

Figure 11. Equivalent shear modulus degradation curve for different depths at the GVDA test site (a) eastwest and (b) northsouth
directions. The solid black line represents the fitted-curve of our data, and the gray lines represent (when available) the results from laboratory
tests performed by Stokoe and Darandeli (1998) on samples taken at different depths. The red circles indicate the mean values of the measured data, as well as the sigma for different bands of strain, that is, < 1 108 , 1 108 5 108 , 5 108 1 107 , 1 107 5 107 ,
5 107 1 107 , 1 107 5 106 , 5 106 1 105 , and 1 105 5 105 .
actual stressstrain relationship. Nevertheless, above 1 104 ,
the nonlinear response is clearly observed and estimated by
the PGV=V S30 proxy, allowing us to assume an efficient
prediction of the nonlinear response from the ratio between
PGV and V S30 .

Conclusion
The near-surface geology effects of the GVDA and the
WLA, both situated in the active SAF system, are analyzed for
nonlinearity assessment using in situ data. We monitor the

In situ Assessment of the G Curve for Characterizing the Nonlinear Response of Soil

1007

Figure 12. Equivalent shear modulus degradation curve for different depths at the WLA test site: (a) eastwest and (b) north
south directions. The solid black line represents the fitted curve of our data, and the gray-filled circles represent the results from Cox
(2006). The red circles indicate the mean value of the measured data, as well as the sigma for different bands of strain, that is,
< 1 108 , 1 108 5 108 , 5 108 1 107 , 1 107 5 107 , 5 107 1 107 , 1 107 5 106 , 5 106 1 105 ,
1 105 5 105 , 5 105 1 104 , 1 104 5 104 , 5 104 1 103 .
changes in the in-situ shear-wave velocity, measured using
the seismic interferometry by deconvolution technique.
We are able to estimate the velocity profile and to monitor the nonlinear response of the sites with respect to the
level of shaking. In our case, we consider the loading using
the strain proxy v
=V
S, reproducing in each layer the shear
strain accounting for the degradation of shear-wave velocity.

At the GVDA test site, slight anisotropy is clearly demonstrated between east and north components, in agreement
with previous studies. The anisotropy at the WLA test site
is negligible, and anisotropy is not influenced by the deformation (shear strain) level at either site.
We show that the v
=V
S ratio (as well as PGV=V S30 ) is a
deformation proxy. In the first case, deformation is accurate

1008

J. Chandra, P. Guguen, J. H. Steidl, and L. F. Bonilla

Figure 13. Comparison of equivalent shear modulus degradation curves between the GVDA (blank) and WLA (filled) test sites. The
circles represent the east direction data, and the triangles represent the north direction data. The solid (east direction) and dashed (north
direction) lines represent the fitted hyperbolic model from equation (4) for GVDA (black) and WLA (gray) test sites. The dotted-dashed lines
represent the tl of 1 106 and tv of 1 104 .
enough to observe in the uppermost layers the cyclic deformation due to the nonlinear elastic behavior of the soil at values
close to 1 106 , as reported by Vucetic (1994) and Johnson
and Jia (2005). The a
versus v
=V
S curve represents the
proxy evolution of the stressstrain relationship of the soil column under different levels of excitation. For the lowest S-wave
velocities (softer soil), typical nonlinearity trends are observed
compared with the higher velocity group (stiffer soil). The magnitude and the PGA are shown to be complementary for predicting nonlinearity, and source effects of the ground motion
(such as the frequency of the seismic energy) may also influence the nonlinear behavior of the site. By comparing a
versus
v
=V
S with PGAPGV=V S30 , we show that although the use
of V S30 is convenient in practice, the results are more dispersive
compared with the use of V
S . Nevertheless, in both cases the
inverted classic hyperbolic model offers a good fit with the data
and, with further study, could be used for nonlinear prediction.

This study has shown a possible solution for in situ estimation of the shear modulus degradation curve of each layer located
at different depths. The results are comparable with the laboratory
measurements obtained previously when available. Nonlinear
behavior starts at a low level of deformation (1 106 ) inside
the soil column and becomes more significant at a deformation of
around 1 104 . The data is also inverted with the classic hyperbolic model that fits the data with moderate scattering using
V S30 and/or V
S. We demonstrated that despite the lack of large
strain values, the high values of the correlation coefficients R
confirm the good prediction of the nonlinear hyperbolic model
using the strain proxy (PGV=V S30 or v
=V
S ) derived from in situ
data. This type of analysis might finally be integrated into the
prediction of the ground motion, including nonlinearity. Analysis
of the efficiency of our method with other classical methods (e.g.,
based on f 0 , mode shape variation, and amplification reduction)
might be performed in further studies for comparison.

Table 1
Comparison of Shear Modulus G Reduction Values at GVDA
Stokoe and Darandeli (1998)
Depth (m)

3.5
6.5
27
41.3
27
41.3

1 G=G0 %*

28
15
9
7
1
1

In Situ (This Study)

Direction

Depth (m)

2

1 V
2
S =V S0 %

1 10
3:3 105
2 105

East
North
East

015
2250

28
17
11

9 106

North

2250

Shear Strain ()
4

The table compares the G reduction values between in situ assessment (our study) and laboratory tests from Stokoe and
Darendeli (1998) at the GVDA test site for equivalent shear-strain values provided by laboratory tests or by the strain proxy.
(GVDA, Garner Valley Downhole Array)
*Shear modulus degradation, 1 G=G0 (G0 , shear modulus elastic).
1 V
2 =V
2 , equivalent shear modulus degradation; V
, equivalent linear shear-wave velocity; and V
, equivalent
S
S0
S
S0
linear shear-wave velocity elastic.

In situ Assessment of the G Curve for Characterizing the Nonlinear Response of Soil

Data and Resources

The Garner Valley and Wildlife data used in this study
were collected as part of the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation at University of California, Santa Barbara
(NEES@UCSB). Data can be obtained from the NEES@
UCSB website at http://nees.ucsb.edu/ (last accessed March
2014). Figure 1 is taken from https://www.google.com/maps/
(last accessed February 2014).

Acknowledgments
The authors wish to acknowledge the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife, which provides access to the monitoring site at the Wildlife Liquefaction Array, and the Lake Hemet municipal water district, which provides access
to the monitoring site at Garner Valley. The Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation at University of California, Santa Barbara (NEES@UCSB) field
site facility received support from the George E. Brown, Jr., Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation program through CMS-0217421 and CMMI0927178. The authors are grateful to Stefano Parolai, Marco Mucciarelli, and
an anonymous reviewer for their comments that helped to improve this work.
The authors would also like to gratefully thank the NEES@UCSB and Earth
Research Institute (UCSB) team, in particular Paul Hegarty and Francesco
Civilini, for all the help and discussions during the data collection and processing. We thank the Ecole Doctorale Terre, Univers, Environnement (ED TUE)
Universit de Grenoble for the travel grant to collect the necessary data. We
also thank IFSTTAR, France, for funding this research.

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Institut des Sciences de la Terre

Universit Grenoble Alpes/CNRS/IFSTTAR
38041 Grenoble CEDEX 9, France
johanes.chandra@ujfgrenoble.fr
philippe.gueguen@ujfgrenoble.fr
(J.C., P.G.)

Earth Research Institute (ERI)

University of California
Santa Barbara, California 93106
jamie.steidl@ucsb.edu
(J.H.S.)

Universit Paris Est

Institut Franais des Sciences et Technologies des Transports
de lAmnagement et des Rseaux
Paris 77447, France
fabian.bonilla@ifsttar.fr
(L.F.B.)
Manuscript received 10 July 2014;
Published Online 24 February 2015