Workshop “Seismic calibration experiments in Eurasia – Past, Present and Future”, Almaty March 28-29, 2023

On March 28-29, 2023 there was the international workshop in Almaty named “Seismic calibration experiments in Eurasia – Past, Present and Future”. The workshop was attended by the specialists from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukrain, and the USA. The workshop was initiated and coordinated by Dr. Kevin Mackey from Michigan State University who has been working for many years in Central Asia and Caucasus countries under different projects. The meeting organization was supported by the International Science and Technology Centre (ISTC).  The participants made presentations on the experience of each country in conducting the calibration experiments and application of these data in seismological purposes.

It was noted that to conduct the work, seismologists collect and process data of numerous seismic stations and networks. The quality of results depends on the accuracy of the acquired data processing, i.e. estimate the seismic event source parameters with high accuracy – location of earthquake or explosion origin, its magnitude or yield.   All this requires the detailed calibration of our seismic networks. 

For the calibration of one seismic network, as rule, the data from the neighboring regions is required. The international group of seismologists – the workshop participants agreed on the necessity of joint efforts and cooperation in conducting and calibration of seismic networks belonging to the countries-participants.   The fields of research focused not only on new calibration explosions, but on the application of historical information on the archive records of nuclear, chemical explosions, and on the analysis of mining explosions data and ground-truth earthquakes were discussed.

From Kazakhstan, the report named “Integrated analysis of calibration chemical explosions data conducted in 1997-2000 at the former Semipalatinsk Test Site” was presented by Natalya Mikhailova, Doctor of Physics and Maths, Head of the Data Centre of the Institute of Geophysical Research of the National Nuclear Centre of RK.