Seismic Energy Generation and Partitioning into Various Regional Phases From Different Seismic Sources in the Middle East Region

: The project was focused on studying, experimentally, features of seismic energy generation and partitioning of P and S waves from different explosive seismic sources, at near-source and regional distances, in the time and spectral domain. An extensive database of Ground Truth single-fired explosions was created. The explosions selected contain a broad variety of design features (buried and surface sources, tamped and decoupled shots, large diameter 0.5-0.8m borehole and near-spherical cavity charges), charge weight (100-32500kg), depth (14 62m), scaled burial depth (1.0-3.9m/kg1/3), emplacement rocks (alluvium, basalts, marls) and geological settings. The highlight of this project was the source phenomenology experiments: Decoupling and Depth-of-Burial (DOB) explosion series at the phosphate quarry Oron, Negev. A special technology was used for creation of large cavities (up to 3.5 m) at different depths, to accommodate large near-spherical ANFO charges. Extensive observations in the near-source zone (100-800 m) and remotely (up to 350 km) demonstrated signal characteristics and energy generation features; decoupling factors were estimated. The design and configuration of the Oron DOB experiment were preferable in design to the previous Balapan DOB experiment (1997): media homogeneity, small aspect ratio (~1), full containment and small separation (~200 m) of the shots. The crossover point of spectral dominance at ~10 Hz for different depth shots, observed at ranges 0.2-230 km, was remarkably consistent with the Mueller/Murphy source model predictions.