Regional location in western China

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Accurately locating seismic events in western China using only regional seismic stations is a challenge. Not only is the number of seismic stations available for locating events small, but most stations available to researchers are often over 10{degree} distant. Here the authors describe the relocation, using regional stations, of both nuclear and earthquake sources near the Lop Nor test site in western China. For such relocations, they used the Earthquake Data Reports provided by the US Geological Survey (USGS) for the reported travel times. Such reports provide a listing of all phases reported to the USGS from stations throughout the world, including many stations in the People`s Republic of China. LocSAT was used as the location code. The authors systematically relocated each event int his study several times, using fewer and fewer stations at reach relocation, with the farther stations being eliminated at each step. They found that location accuracy, judged by comparing solutions from few stations to the solution provided using all available stations, remained good typically until fewer than seven stations remained.With a good station distribution, location accuracy remained surprisingly good (within 7 km) using as few as 3 stations. Because these relocations were computed without good station corrections and without source-specific station corrections (that is, path corrections), they believe that such regional locations can be substantially improved, largely using static station corrections and source-specific station corrections, at least in the Lop nor area, where sources have known locations. Elsewhere in China, one must rely upon known locations of regionally-recorded explosions. Locating such sources is clearly one of the major problems to be overcome before one can provide event locations with any assurance from regional stations.