Discrimination between quarry blasts and micro-earthquakes using spectral analysis, applied to local Israeli events

TL;DR

This paper introduces a spectral analysis method to distinguish quarry blasts from micro-earthquakes using seismic data, focusing on ripple-firing patterns in amplitude spectra for event discrimination.

Contribution

It presents a novel spectral modulation and time-frequency analysis approach for discriminating quarry blasts from micro-earthquakes based on ripple-firing recognition.

Findings

Effective discrimination of quarry blasts from micro-earthquakes using spectral patterns.

Ripple-firing patterns are identifiable in amplitude spectra.

Method has potential applications in exploration seismology.

Abstract

This study presents the concept of spectral modulation and a time-frequency analysis, applied to broadband local ($5<\Delta<200$ km) seismic data from quarry blasts and micro-earthquakes, kindly supplied by the Institute for Petroleum Research and Geophysics (IPRG), Holon, Israel, from the so-called GIF-array. The aim of this research is verification of ripple-firing by recognition of scalloping trends in amplitude-spectra and hence discriminating quarry blasts from other events. Most quarry blasts are ripple-fired, in northern Israel open pit blasts; consequently the event discrimination method based on the recognition of ripple-firing patterns in the signal was chosen. The methods presented in this dissertation might also be applicable for deconvolution and dereverberation purposes in exploration seismology.