A digital seismogram archive of nuclear explosion signals, recorded at the Borovoye Geophysical Observatory, Kazakhstan, from 1966 to 1996

Abstract

a b s t r a c tSeismologists from Kazakhstan, Russia, and the United States have rescued the Soviet-era archive of nuclear explosion seismograms recorded at Borovoye in northern Kazakhstan during the period 1966-1996. The signals had been stored on about 8000 magnetic tapes, which were held at the recording observatory. After hundreds of man-years of work, these digital waveforms together with significant metadata are now available via the project URL, namely http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/Monitoring/Data/ as a modern open database, of use to diverse communities.Three different sets of recording systems were operated at Borovoye, each using several different seismometers and different gain levels. For some explosions, more than twenty different channels of data are available. A first data release, in 2001, contained numerous glitches and lacked many instrument responses, but could still be used for measuring accurate arrival times and for comparison of the strengths of different types of seismic waves. The project URL also links to our second major data release, for nuclear explosions in Eurasia recorded in Borovoye, in which the data have been deglitched, all instrument responses have been included, and recording systems are described in detail.This second dataset consists of more than 3700 waveforms (digital seismograms) from almost 500 nuclear explosions in Eurasia, many of them recorded at regional distances. It is important as a training set for the development and evaluation of seismological methods of discriminating between earthquakes and underground explosions, and can be used for assessment of three-dimensional models of the Earth's interior structure.

Converting scanned images of seismic reflection data into SEG-Y format

“…Within the field of seismology digital recording became standard in the 1970s and therefore, the majority of data collected earlier were stored only on paper or film. Kanamori et al (2010) and An et al (2015) provide examples of how re-analysis of historical data can provide insight into previous seismic events and improve the understanding of the Earth's structure. A range of initiatives have been set up to digitize and rescue seismological archives from around the world (Okal 2015).…”

Computer Vision Algorithms of DigitSeis for Building a Vectorised Dataset of Historical Seismograms from the Archive of Royal Observatory of Belgium

“…From the 1880s to the 1960s, seismographs were used for recording ground motion continuously and systematically [ 7 ]. The data were stored in an analogue paper-based format using narrow-band low-range instruments [ 8 , 9 ] or as magnetic tapes [ 10 ].…”

The Refined USSR Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Database for Borovoye Geophysical Observatory

“…This is still important in term of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty verification and estimating Earth structure models. Kazakhstan for acquiring teleseismic (long-distance) and regional (short-distance) seismic signals to monitor the Asian region [2,3]. The geological structures, particularly in Northern Kazakhstan, allow seismic waves to propagate very efficiently, with minimal attenuation and minimal scattering [4].…”

“…In the late 1990s, the digital recordings from about 8000 magnetic tapes of the Borovoye Observatory were reformatted into a modern format [2,5,6]. This work was part of a program sponsored by the USA-based Natural Resources Defense Council and the Soviet Academy of Sciences [2,3]. Currently, they are stored at the Institute of Geospheres Dynamics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IDG RAS) and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University (LDEO).…”