Explosion seismic reflections from the Earth’s core

Recent seismological studies have presented evidence for the existence of a layer with ultra-low seismic velocities at the core-mantle boundary at ca. 2900 km depth. We report high-amplitude, high-frequency, and laterally coherent seismic arrivals from three nuclear explosions in Siberia. With recording station intervals of 15 km, the seismic phases are readily correlated and show the presence of a thin, ultra-low velocity zone in a region where it was not previously reported. The duration and complexity of the arrivals are inconsistent with a simple core-mantle boundary and require a hitherto unidentified, kilometre-scale, fine structure in the ultra-low velocity zone. The observations may be explained by a ca. 7 km thick, two-layer, ultra-low velocity zone with exceptional low velocities, which indicate the presence of high percentages of melt (>15%), in particular in the lower part of the zone. Waveform variation implies lateral change in the thickness and physical properties of the ultra-low velocity zone with a wavelength of less than 100 km.     

A millennial-scale record of Holocene tsunamis on the Kronotskiy Bay coast, Kamchatka, Russia

Deposits from as many as 50 large tsunamis during the last 7000 years are preserved on the Pacific coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula near the mouth of the Zhupanova River, southern Kronotskiy Bay. These deposits are dated and correlated using Holocene marker tephra layers. The combined, preserved record of tsunami deposits and of numerous marker tephras on Kamchatka offers an unprecedented opportunity to study tsunami frequency. For example, from the stratigraphy along southern Kronotskiy Bay, we estimate frequency of large tsunamis (>5 m runup). In the last 3000 years, the minimum frequency is about one large tsunami per 100 years, and the maximum about one large tsunami per 30 years; the latter frequency occurred from about 0 to 1000 A.D. This time interval corresponds to a period of increased seismicity and volcanic activity that appears to be recorded in many places on the Kamchatka Peninsula.     

The mechanisms of shallow earthquakes and the monitoring of a comprehensive test ban

The ability of seismological criteria to identify earthquakes from underground explosions depends partly on the orientation of the earthquake source. Well-determined double-couple moment tensor solutions for a large number of earthquakes have been published in the Harvard centroid moment tensor (CMT) and United Slates Geological Survey (USGS) catalogues. Statistical analyses of these catalogues indicate that the distribution of the orientation of earthquake mechanisms is not random. The distribution of the T axes shows significant clustering around the downward vertical, indicating that a larger number of earthquake mechanisms radiate compressional P -wave energy to teleseismic distances from near the maximum of the radiation pattern than is predicted if earthquake sources are randomly oriented double couples. The clustered T axes correspond to compressional dip-slip mechanisms, and it is this type of mechanism which is believed to cause both the m _b: M _s (the ratio of body-wave to surface-wave magnitude) and first-motion criteria to misidentify an earthquake as an explosion.     

Recent Advances in Prediction and Processing of Strong Ground Motions

We present an overview of our recent results on utilizing small earthquakes in the earthquake engineering practice. Site-specific ground motion time-histories of large earthquakes can be successfully simulated using recordings of small earthquakes which are often referred to as 'empirical Green's functions' in seismology. Another important practical problem is whether and how these observations can be used in seismic risk studies which are based on empirical attenuation relations for ground motion parameters. We study a possibility of extrapolating attenuation relations for small earthquakes, to larger magnitudes using the data from the Garner Valley downhole array in Southern California. Finally we introduce efficient ground motion processing techniques in frequency- and time-domains and apply them to site response estimation.