Investigation of Regional Seismic Discrimination Issues for Small or Decoupled Nuclear Explosions.
Abstract
The goals of lowering the seismic threshold for underground nuclear explosions to magnitudes near 2.5 m sob o and extending the capability to other geographical regions will require utilization of regional stations for detection and identification. However, regional techniques have seldom been tested on small nuclear explosions. Therefore, S-CUBED is conducting a research program aimed at the identification problems associated with small or decoupled nuclear explosions near a low monitoring threshold (e.g. 1-kt fully decoupled or about 2.5 mb). Initial efforts have focused on using source scaling procedures to scale down records from larger explosions and produce representative seismograms at ARPA regional array stations. The scaled signals embedded in typical background noise at the station enable an assessment of capabilities for different regional signal analysis methods at the lower thresholds. Our preliminary findings are that useful far-regional signals from small or decoupled nuclear explosions may be constrained to very limited high-frequency bands, which may limit the capabilities of some regional detection and identification techniques.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 1994
- Accession Number
- ADA292744
Entities
People
- Brian W. Barker
- John R. Murphy
- Theron J. Bennett