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Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America; February 2007; v. 97; no. 1B; p. 114-127; DOI: 10.1785/0120060078
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Chinese National Network Magnitudes, Their Relation to NEIC Magnitudes, and Recommendations for New IASPEI Magnitude Standards

Peter Bormann1, Ruifeng Liu2, Xiao Ren2, Rudolf Gutdeutsch3, Diethelm Kaiser4 and Silvia Castellaro5

1 GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (GFZ)
Division 2: Physics of the Earth
Telegrafenberg E423
D-14473 Potsdam, Germany
 (P.B.)

2 China Earthquake Network Center
No. 63 Fuxing Avenue
Beijing 100036, People’s Republic of China
 (R.L., X.R.)

3 Institute for Meteorology and Geophysics
University of Vienna
Althanstrasse 14 UZA2
A 1090 Vienna, Austria
 (R.G.)

4 Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR)
Stilleweg 2
30655 Hannover, Germany
 (D.K.)

5 Università degli Studi di Bologna
Dipartimento di Fisica, Settore di Geofisica
v. le C. B. Pichat 8
40127 Bologna, Italy
 (S.C.)

We investigate the linear regression relationships between common seismic magnitudes determined by the Chinese Earthquake Network Center (CENC) and compare them with related magnitude determinations for the same events at the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC). Despite their generally good agreement some systematic differences are revealed. These differences are due to differences in seismograph response (shape and bandwidth), the time window for measurement of maximum P-wave amplitudes, the period and distance ranges used, and, in part, also the different calibration functions applied. Chinese broadband body-wave magnitude mB, compared with the NEIC short-period P- wave magnitude mb, is much less prone to magnitude saturation. Thus it is more suitable to assess the size of large earthquakes from P waves. Also, following International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth’s Interior (IASPEI) recommendations of 1967, Chinese surface-wave magnitude MS is determined in a wider distance (1° < {Delta} < 180°) and period range (3 sec < T < 30 sec) than MS(20) at NEIC (20° ≤ {Delta} ≤ 160° and 18 sec ≤ T ≤ 22 sec, respectively). Chinese MS for small and medium earthquakes at regional distances between 2° < {Delta} < 10° scales well with local magnitude ML. In contrast, NEIC MS(20) tends to underestimate the magnitude of regional events when the IASPEI-recommended MS calibration function by Vanek et al. (1962) is used. These findings support some of the new standards for magnitude measurements from digital data adopted at the IASPEI meeting in 2005. They include, complementary to band-limited mb and MS(20), the determination of mB and MS(BB) measured on unfiltered broadband records.




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S. Castellaro and P. Bormann
Performance of Different Regression Procedures on the Magnitude Conversion Problem
Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, August 1, 2007; 97(4): 1167 - 1175.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


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