Abstract
Different waveform-based discrimination parameters were tested using multivariate statistical analysis to develop a real-time procedure for discriminating explosions from earthquakes at regional distances in the Iberian Peninsula. This work enabled a purge of the Spanish National Seismic Catalogue for the period 2003–2014. The training data consisted of waveform-based signal properties in the time and frequency domain for events (earthquakes and explosions) recorded during the selected time period by the Spanish Broadband National Network and Sonseca short-period Array of the Instituto Geográfico Nacional (IGN). For each station and its associated training dataset, a discriminant function was defined as a linear combination of the measured variables. All station-specific discriminant functions were then combined with a weighting scheme to test the training events, revealing that 86 % of the events were consistent with the analysts’ judgement. The application of this method to the whole of the IGN’s seismic database for the studied period gave an 83 % success rate; however, a 91 % success rate is reached if events are classified using at least three stations and 100 % confidence levels.
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We would like to thank the Instituto Geográfico Nacional of Spain for providing the data for the study. We appreciate the valuable comments of the anonymous reviewers, which helped to improve the manuscript.
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García Vargas, M., Rueda, J., García Blanco, R.M. et al. A Real-Time Discrimination System of Earthquakes and Explosions for the Mainland Spanish Seismic Network. Pure Appl. Geophys. 174, 213–228 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-016-1330-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-016-1330-z