Detection, Location and Identification of Explosions and Earthquakes using Regional Seismic Data Recorded at a Single Station

摘要

This report summarizes the results of an analysis of the various factors affecting the detection, location and event identification capability of a single seismic station in the regional distance range. A regional seismic detection model is described in Section II where it is applied to the evaluation of the frequency dependent detectability of underground explosions in various source media. On the basis of these analyses it is concluded that P waves from explosions with yields as small as 1 kt should be detectable at ranges on the order of 1000 km or more over regional propagation paths characteristic of the Eastern U.S. Event location capability associated with single station seismic data is assessed in Section III where it is concluded that epicentral distance accuracies on the order of 10 to 15 km and source azimuth accuracies of better than 10 degrees are achievable using routinely available data processing procedures. Single station, regional event discrimination capability is reviewed in Section IV where it is concluded that, although questions remain concerning the reliability of simple regional phase amplitude ratio discriminants (e.g. L sub g/P), available evidence suggests that regional versions of the M sub s/m sub b and short-period P wave spectral discriminants generally provide good event separation when applied to single station data. (Author)