Discussion on the Relationship between Different Earthquake Magnitude Scales and the Effect of Seismic Station Sites on Magnitude Estimation

Based on the earthquake catalog reported by the Chinese digital seismic network in recent years, we select the earthquakes with both surface wave magnitude and local magnitude and fit them into a relationship between the two magnitudes. The systematic difference is found from the formula which has been used for 30 years. Because of a large dynamic range and wide frequency range of the current digital observation system, in addition to a larger number of stations and earthquakes being used compared to before, the relation obtained in this paper seems more reliable. Our calculation shows that there is no significant difference before and after magnitude conversion so we suggest the abandonment of magnitude conversion. The site response of a station consists of amplification at different frequencies. The amplification is equal to about 1 and changes little with frequency at stations located on basement rock, and it is greater than 1 at low frequency ranges and less than 1 at high frequency ranges at stations located on sediment layers. The difference between magnitudes from single station located on sediment layer and the average magnitude from the whole network increases from negative to positive with period. It seems that there is no fixed station correction factor and the station correction method does not work to improve the accuracy and magnitude estimates.