Blasting and Other Mining-related Activities in Kentucky: A Source of Earthquake Misidentification

Seismicity of the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone Based on a Temporary Seismic Array Experiment

“…The three-component phased array aids considerably in this process by unambiguous identification of surface waves characterized by low phase velocities relative to P and S. Thus, although explosions outnumber natural events by more than 10 to 1, we are confident that we have minimized the contamination of the catalog by explosions as much as is reasonably possible. On the other hand, as Street et al (2002) point out, the discrimination process can probably never be made foolproof. The most likely problems with this discrimination method are events well outside the network where blockage of surface waves (strong attenuation by scattering at a near-vertical structural boundary) is a strong possibility.…”

“…The origin times of the events are randomly distributed through the hours of the day (Pope, 1999), while events we have classified as explosions show the typical strongly peaked distribution during daylight hours (e.g., Street et al, 2002).…”

Documentation for the 2002 update of the national seismic hazard maps

“…In all regions, we made a more extensive effort for the 2002 maps to remove quarry blasts and other explosions from the earthquake catalog before calculating the seismicity parameters. For example, we removed blasts for the Kentucky catalog using the report of Street et al (2002). In other cases we used additional information from the National Earthquake Information Center to identify suspected blasts in the catalog.…”

Seismicity analysis at the Prestige oil-tanker wreck area (Galicia Margin, NW of Iberia)

“…A careful analysis of all the undetected events has been carried out to exclude those related to artificial sources. Quarry blasts can often be distinguished from natural seismicity according to features such as lower frequency content, a well developed dispersive wave train, a large P-to S-wave amplitude and time and local repetition (Street et al, 2002). Considering these features, more than 50 events have not been included in the final catalogue.…”