Basic Research on Seismic and Infrasonic Monitoring of the European Arctic
Abstract
This project is a research effort aimed at improving seismic and infrasonic monitoring tools at regional distances with emphasis on the European Arctic region, which includes the former Novaya Zemlya test site. The project has three main components: a) to improve seismic processing in this region using the regional seismic arrays installed in northern Europe, b) to investigate the potential of using combined seismic/infrasonic processing to characterize events in this region and c) to carry out experimental operation, evaluation and tuning of the seismic threshold monitoring technique. On 11 November 2009, signals from a magnitude 3.2 event in the eastern Barents Sea were recorded by seismic stations in the Nordic countries and in NW Russia. This part of the Barents Sea has no known history of significant earthquake activity. However, over the past decades, several seismic events at various locations in this region have been detected, and several of these have been confidently associated with anthropogenic activity, like the Kursk submarine accident. As to the source type of the 11 November 2009 event, we are not in a position to draw a firm conclusion. Observations at the ARCES array, at a distance of 800 km, show signal energy up to 40 Hz and show no indication of spectral banding or cepstral peaks. This is quite different from the characteristics of underwater explosions in this area, suggesting that the event is more likely to be an earthquake. This study further illustrates the very efficient high-frequency seismic energy propagation characteristics of the Barents Sea area. Seismic and infrasound signals at ARCES have recently been associated with blasting at the Suurikuusikko gold mine in northern Finland, approximately 10 km to the west of Hukkakero. This mine started operations in the summer of 2006 and, in order to develop a database of explosions, multi-channel waveform correlation detectors were initiated using ARCES seismic signals as templates.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2010
- Accession Number
- ADA569569
Entities
People
- Frode Ringdal
- Johannes Schweitzer
- Steven J. Gibbons
- Svein Mykkeltveit
- Tormod Kvaerna