Discrimination among small magnitude events on Nevada Test Site

Technical Report · Wed Aug 01 04:00:00 EDT 1973

OSTI ID:4309425

Peppin, W A; McEvilly, T V

y of California Lawrence Livermore Laboratory four-station seismic array, deployed at close range (less than 500 km) azimuthally about Nevada Test Site (NTS), allow investigation of the body wave-surface wave discriminant between explosion and eanthquakes for small events confined to NTS, extending previous results to magnitudes around 3.5. It is found that natural earthquakes, explosion collapses, and explosion aftershocks all are distinct from explosions, and that the populations do not seem to converge at the low magnitudes. Also, for explosions, there is no change in the slope of the Pn versus Rayleigh wave amplitude relation over more than three orders of magnitude. Since the non- explosion events are shallow, of low magnitude, and of different source types, differences in source dimension, focal depth, and focal mechanism appear inadequate to explain the discriminant at small magnitudes. (auth)

• Research Organization: California Univ., Berkeley (USA)
• NSA Number: NSA-29-024143
• OSTI ID: 4309425
• Report Number(s): AD--766961-7; AFOSR-TR--73-1586
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

*EARTHQUAKES-- SEISMIC DETECTION
*NUCLEAR EXPLOSION DETECTION-- SEISMIC WAVES
N42510* --Engineering--Nuclear Explosions--Detection Systems
NEVADA TEST SITE
UNDERGROUND EXPLOSIONS