Detecting Local Earthquakes in a Noisy Continental Margin Environment

Oregon State University, Corvallis OR

Investigators

Abstract

Assessing earthquake risk due to seismicity along the Cascadia margin from northern California to southern British Columbia is a matter of great public interest. Studies of regional seismicity recorded by arrays of seismographs are a primary tool for this purpose, but to date such studies have been largely limited to onshore arrays. In the upcoming Cascadia project, onshore instrumentation will be complemented by deployments of 60 or more Ocean Bottom Seismographs (OBS) off the Cascadia coast for several years. A modest deployment of OBSs off the Oregon coast in 2007-2009 has demonstrated the great difficulty of separating relevant seismic events in OBS data from impulsive signals of probable biological origin. This project seeks to develop computer automated methods for separating seismic signals from extraneous signals in the OBS data, particularly for instruments located in shallow water near the coast. The project has a number of broader impacts, but by far the most significant is the very high societal relevance of developing these techniques for studies of seismicity and seismic hazards in general, and for the Cascadia project in particular.