Specail Feature Computer-Aided Seismic Analysis and Discrimination

The tremendous amount of data generated in the three branches of seismic activity–nuclear test discrimination, earthquake research, and geophysical exploration–places extraordinary demands on digital processing for extracting significant information. Faced with this heavy workload, the seismic community has from the start led in the development of analytical methods such as compositing (extracting a signal from noise) and digital filtering. More recently, seismic analysts have been using automatic-pattern-recognition techniques to discriminate between underground nuclear explosions and earthquakes.