Applying Source and Path Corrections to Improve Discrimination in China

Monitoring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) to magnitude levels below 4.0 will require use of regional seismic data recorded at distances of less than 2000 km. To improve regional discriminant performance we tested three different methods of correcting for path effects, and the third method includes a correction for source-scaling. We used regional recordings of broadband from stations in and near China. Our first method removes trends between phase ratios and physical parameters associated with each event-station path. This approach requires knowledge of the physical parameters along an event-station path, such as topography, basin thickness, and crustal thickness. Our second approach is somewhat more empirical. We examine spatial distributions of phase amplitudes after subtracting event magnitude and correcting for path distance. For a given station, phase, and frequency band, we grid and then smooth the magnitude-corrected and distance-corrected amplitudes to create a map representing a correction surface. We reference these maps to correct phase amplitudes prior to forming discrimination ratios. Our third approach is the most complicated, but also the most rigorous. For a given station and phase, we invert the spectra of a number of well-recorded earthquakes for source and path parameters. We then use the values obtained from the inversion to correct phase amplitudes for the effects of source size, distance, and attenuation. Finally,the amplitude residuals are gridded and smoothed to create a correction surface representing secondary path effects. We find that simple ratio- parameter corrections can improve discrimination performance along some paths (such as Kazakh Test Site (KTS) to WMQ), but for other paths (such as Lop Nor to AAK) the corrections are not beneficial. Our second method, the empirical path correction surfaces, improves discrimination performance for Lop Nor to AAK paths. Our third method, combined source and path corrections, has only been tested at WMQ (primarily using KTS explosions and northwest China earthquakes), but the method successfully corrects for source-scaling and propagation effects. We favor this combined source and path correction technique over the other correction methods, and we plan to test this method at other Asian stations. 11 refs., 7 figs.