Digitization of Nuclear Explosion Seismograms from the Former Soviet Union
Abstract
This project has been a collaboration between the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and the Institute of Geophysical Research in Almaty, Kazakhstan. More than 6000 seismograms, recorded photographically or with pen on paper, displaying signals from nuclear explosions conducted in the atmosphere, underwater, or underground, have been collected from 270 stations operated in the former Soviet Union. These signals, including thousands recorded at regional distances from nuclear explosions in Eurasia, have been scanned, digitized, and incorporated into a modern digital database (CSS3.0), now openly available at http://www.LDEO.columbia.edu/Monitoring/digitized_analog_FSUarchive. Most of these stations lie in a region stretching approximately 6000 km East-West and 2000 km North-South, which includes much of Central Asia. Much of this work has been done in Kazakhstan. Also included, are seismograms from large chemical explosions, and some from earthquakes near nuclear test sites. The newly-available data are expected to improve studies of three-dimensional Earth structure (mantle and crust), to promote the development and evaluation of seismological methods of discrimination between explosions and earthquakes, and to provide a useful training set for analysts interpreting data today from modern seismographic stations used for monitoring most of which were installed long after the era of frequent nuclear testing (1960s to1980s) had come to an end, and which therefore do not have an archive of the types of signal that are generated by nuclear explosions.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 30, 2015
- Accession Number
- ADA618975
Entities
People
- Inna N. Sokolova
- Natalya N. Mikhailova
- Paul G. Richards
- Won-Young Kim
Organizations
- Columbia University