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

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.