Summary
About twenty blasts are used to determine crustal structure and to monitor temporal seismic velocity changes in southern California. The shot time is determined up to 10 msec by using a disposable pick-up placed directly on the explosive. About 17 permanent stations and 20 temporary stations are used for the recordings. With a fast paper speed (typically 1 cm/sec) and the WWVB radio signals superposed on the seismic trace, absolute timing accuracy of up to 10 msec is achieved. A representative structure thus determined consists of a 4 km thick 5.5 km/sec layer underlain successively by 23.4 km thick 6.3 km/sec layer, 5.0 km thick 6.8 km/sec layer and 7.8 km/sec half space. The details of the lower crust are somewhat uncertain. This structure can explain the travel time data, corrected for the station and source elevations and for the station delays, to ±0.15 sec. Small but systematic temporal velocity changes up to 3% have been found for some of the profiles. If the effect of the migration of the shot point is small enough, these changes are larger than experimental errors and represent real temporal change in the material property between the shot point and the stations.
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Additional information
Contribution No. 2530, Division of Geological Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.
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Kanamori, H., Hadley, D. Crustal structure and temporal velocity change in southern California. PAGEOPH 113, 257–280 (1975). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01592916
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01592916