Single-Station Backazimuth Estimations for Earthquake & Explosive Sources

Methods for improving single-station event location estimations are an active area of research as the seismological community works toward identifying and locating ever-smaller seismic events. Events that are poorly recorded, such as those with small magnitudes, or in locations with little station coverage, are often difficult to locate with standard network traveltime-based methods. Backazimuth predictions for individual seismic stations may be useful to help identify the source region for such events, but they are often unreliable as polarization analysis methods are highly sensitive to variations in three-component waveforms. Here we consider an assessment of factors contributing to the quality and reliability of backazimuth predictions for a selection of anthropogenic and earthquake source types. We utilize data recorded on University of Utah Seismograph Stations and broadband seismic stations deployed as part of EarthScopes Idaho-Oregon (IDOR) project. Source types from these catalogs include surface mine blasts, local and regional earthquakes, and borehole explosions. We compare results for backazimuth predictions from approximately co-located explosive and earthquake sources in Utah and Idaho, and examine station-to-station prediction variation at local to regional distances for a single event. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energys National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.