Discussion on the Relationship between Different Earthquake Magnitude Scales and the Effect of Seismic Station Sites on Magnitude Estimation

Based on the earthquake catalog reported by the Chinese digital seismic network in recent years,we select the earthquakes with both surface wave magnitude and local magnitude and fit them into a relationship between the two magnitudes.The systematic difference is found from the formula which has been used for 30 years.Because of a large dynamic range and wide frequency range of the current digital observation system,in addition to a larger number of stations and earthquakes being used compared to before,the relation obtained in this paper seems more reliable.Our calculation shows that there is no significant difference before and after magnitude conversion so we suggest the abandonment of magnitude conversion.The site response of a station consists of amplification at different frequencies.The amplification is equal to about 1 and changes little with frequency at stations located on basement rock,and it is greater than 1 at low frequency ranges and less than 1 at high frequency ranges at stations located on sediment layers.The difference between magnitudes from single station located on sediment layer and the average magnitude from the whole network increases from negative to positive with period.It seems that there is no fixed station correction factor and the station correction method does not work to improve the accuracy and magnitude estimates.

Calibration of local magnitude scale for Hindukush continental subduction zone

Hindukush is an active subduction zone where at least one earthquake occurs on daily basis.For seismic hazard studies,it is important to develop a local magnitude scale using the data of local seismic network.We have computed local magnitude scale for Hindukush earthquakes using data from local network belonging to Center for Earthquake Studies(CES)for a period of three years,i.e.2015–2017.A total of 26,365 seismic records pertaining to 2,683 earthquakes with magnitude 2.0 and greater,was used with hypocentral distance less than 600 km.Magnitude scale developed by using this data comes to be M_(L)=logA+0.929logr+0.00298r-1.84.The magnitude determined through formulated relation was compared with that of standard relation for Southern California and relation developed by the same authors for local network for Northern Punjab.It was observed that Hindukush region has high attenuation as compared to that of Southern California and Northern Punjab which implies that Hindukush is tectonically more disturbed as compared to the said regions,hence,seismically more active as well.We have calculated station correction factors for our network.Station correction factors do not show any pattern which probably owes to the geological and tectonic complexity of this structure.Standard deviation and variance of magnitude residuals for CES network determined using Hutton and Boore scale and scale developed in this study were compared,it showed that a variance reduction of 44.1%was achieved.Average of magnitude residuals for different distance ranges was almost zero which showed that our magnitude scale was stable for all distances up to 600 km.Newly developed magnitude scale will help in homogenization of earthquake catalog.It has been observed that b-value of CES catalog decreases when magnitude is calculated by using newly developed magnitude scale.