Determination of Love- and Rayleigh-Wave Magnitudes for Earthquakes and Explosions and Other Studies

Abstract

Since the 1960s, comparing a Rayleigh-wave magnitude, Ms, to the body-wave magnitude, mb, (e.g., Ms:mb) has been a robust tool for the discrimination of earthquakes and explosions. In this article, we apply a Rayleigh-wave formula as is to Love waves and examine the possibilities for discrimination using only surface wave magnitudes (e.g., Ms:Ms). To calculate the magnitudes we apply the time-domain magnitude technique called Ms(VMAX) developed by Russell (2006) to Rayleigh and Love waves from explosions and earthquakes. Our results indicate that for the majority of the earthquakes studied (>75%), the Ms(VMAX) obtained from Love waves is greater than the estimate from Rayleigh waves. Conversely, 79 of 82 nuclear explosions analyzed (96%) had network-averaged Ms(VMAX)-Rayleigh equal to or greater than the Ms(VMAX)-Love. We used logistic regression to examine an Ms(Rayleigh):Ms(Love) discriminant. Cross-validation analysis of the new discriminant correctly identifies 57 of 82 explosions and 246 of 264 earthquakes while misidentifying 22 explosions as earthquakes and 11 earthquakes as explosions. Further comparative research is planned for Ms(Rayleigh):Ms(Love) versus Ms:mb using common data. We fully expect that Ms(Rayleigh):Ms(Love) will contribute significantly to multivariate event identification.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 30, 2012
Accession Number
ADA579345

Entities

People

  • Anastasia Stroujkova
  • Dale Anderson
  • David Russell
  • Jessie L. Bonner
  • Jonathan Mccarthy
  • Robert Herrmann

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Birds
  • Computer Programs
  • Data Sets
  • Detection
  • Earthquakes
  • Explosions
  • Information Science
  • Love Waves
  • Maximum Likelihood Estimation
  • North America
  • Nuclear Explosions
  • Rayleigh Waves
  • Surface Waves
  • Surveys
  • Time Domain
  • United States

Readers

  • Seismology