Azimuthal Variation in the Surface-Wave Velocity in the Arabian Plate

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper presents an interesting study which can be recommended for publication provided that the following comments are considered.

 

The beginning of the paper is written with much more care than the second half. The latter looks like having been written in a great hurry. There are many misprints and difficult-to-read sentences. Some of such sentences, the most confused, are indicated below, but there are more of them. It would be advisable to reread and improve the readability of the entire text.  

 

The location of Figures 2 to 6 is not optimum because Eq. (1) becomes separated by almost three pages from the sentence in which it is introduced.

 

Fig. 7. For an easier readability of the figure, A_i coefficients should be mentioned explicitly in the respective charts. They may appear together with the indications of cosine functions, as well as replace them. Note that in the present version, the upper chart corresponding to the free term in Eq (1) remains undescribed.

 

Fig. 9 appears before it is mentioned in the text for the first time.

 

Lines 137-141. “A new fit of the dispersion curves is calculated using formula (1), but now, considering only three coefficients A_i (i.e., with i varying from 1 to 3), to try a reduction of the error eps in the fitting of these curves by (1), but Figure 8a (dashed lines) shows that the error doesn’t reduce but it increases, i.e. the fitting by (1) with five coefficients is better than that with three coefficients (Figure 8b).”

The sentence is very difficult to read. In particular, it repeats “but” three times. However, it would be easy to cut it into two or three logically connected sentences.

 

Line 147. “This latera”

‘l’ is missing

 

Lines 150-156. “These regions are established considering the areas with similar dispersion curves for Rayleigh-wave phase velocities, Love-wave phase velocities are not considered because they show big scatter than the Rayleigh-wave ones (Figure 7 and 8a), e.g., in Figure 10b are shown the Love (black circles) and Rayleigh (black triangles) phase velocities corresponding to the region 1, calculated with the mean of the values determined for each period for the paths plotted in the upper central part of Figure 10.”

- This sentence is unreadable and should be divided into several parts.

- Note also that “big…than” should be replaced by “bigger…than”.

 

Line 156. “The vertical bars show in Figure 10b shown the error in the phase velocities at…”

‘Show‘ and ‘shown’ must be permuted.

 

Lines 157-159. “The small vertical bars present for the Rayleigh-wave values shown that the dispersion curves considered for this region have similar values.”

A similar problem with ‘present’ and ‘shown’.

 

Line 165-169. “The Rayleigh-wave dispersion is properly fitted by this model, but the Love-wave dispersion is not fitted (Figure 10b), i.e., the Love- and Rayleigh-wave dispersion are not compatible with a unique isotropic model (Love-Rayleigh discrepancy), and it is necessary to consider the existence of seismic anisotropy (with hexagonal symmetry), in the depth range from 10 to 100 km-depth (Figure 11a [5] and [6]), to fit satisfactorily both dispersion curves (Figure 11b).”

Another very long sentence difficult to follow.

 

Line 173. “Table 5 shows the values of the parameter Xi resulting of the S-velocities”

Replace ‘resulting of’ by ‘resulting from’.

 

Lines 188-189: “Region 1: (a) The SV (blue line) and SH (red line) velocities, determined from anisotropic inversion, are compared with the isotropic S-velocity (Table 4).”

(Black line) should be added for the isotropic case. Otherwise, the caption would be incomplete.

 

Line 201. “…which has originated the horizontal lithospheric shortening…”

A preposition is missing after ‘originated’.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Please, see the main text of the review

Author Response

Reply to reviewer #1 in PDF file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

General comment:

The paper entitled Azimuthal variation of the surface-wave velocity in the Arabian plate is well-written and within the journal's scope.

The author presented the original study together with a clearly described methodology.

Specific comment:

1. Introduction needs to be extended. Please clearly define what is seismic anisotropy, and why isotropic models with different symmetry axes describe subsurface anisotropy. 

2. Please add where the outcome of this project may be applied.

3. Please consider moving Tables 1 and 3 to the appendix as they are quite long

4. The beginning of the conclusion and abstract are almost identical please try to re-write 

Author Response

Reply to reviewer #2 in PDF file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript  studied the azimuthal variation of the surface-wave velocity in the Ara-2 bian plate, and stated that this variation is not due to seismic ani-8 sotropy but to lateral heterogeneity. The manuscript seems not well writen. The introduction is too short and the readers cannot get the main point. The main method used in this MS is also not well presented. The results and discussion part need further work.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The english expression need moderate improvement.

Author Response

Reply to reviewer #3 in PDF file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author analyzed the anisotropy of surface waves in the Arabian plate. A conclusion has been drawn that the anisotropy of surface waves is caused by lateral heterogeneity. These studies are interesting and provide assistance for other researchers to understand the surface wave anisotropy in the region. I think the manuscript is very interesting and can be published after minor revisions.

Suggest rewriting the abstract, as the current abstract does not provide a clear overview of the overall work done on the manuscript.

There is insufficient analysis of the figures in the manuscript, and each figure should have detailed analysis explanations in the manuscript.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English expression is relatively standardized and can meet the publishing requirements.

Author Response

Reply to reviewer #4 in PDF file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Author made corrections I asked for.

I can recommend paper for publication in current version