An artifact in the Kamchatka earthquake catalog: study and elimination

Abstract

According to the available data from the Kamchatka Regional Catalog, in the southwestern part of the Kamchatka region, deep earthquakes systematically occurred away from the main seismic focal zone. The paper shows that these anomalous events in the catalog are an artifact caused by the ambiguity of solutions for the hypocenters of earthquakes, which occur in the region located away from the seismic network. The results can be improved by eliminating the station data with the maximum residuals of the arrival times of the waves. Hypocenters were relocated for 102 deep earthquakes from an extended area covering anomalous events. Most of the new solutions lie within the Kamchatka seismic focal zone. The corresponding changes have been added to the Kamchatka regional catalog.

Keywords

• Kamchatka earthquake catalog
• seismic focal zone
• hypocenter
• artifact