BOROVOYE DIGITAL SEISMOGRAM ARCHIVE FOR UNDERGROUND NUCLEAR TESTS DURING 1966-1996

April 2001

Won-Young Kim and Paul G. Richards
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University
Palisades, NY 10964, USA

Vitaly Adushkin and Vladimir Ovtchinnikov
Institute for Dynamics of Geosphere, Moscow, Russia

Summary

Seismic waveform data digitally recorded at the Borovoye Geophysical Observatory (BRV), in northern Kazakstan since 1966 are available for analysis. The BRV archive for 711 Underground Nuclear Tests* (UNT) carried out by five nuclear powers since 1966 are reformatted into CSS 3.0# data format. The list of event numbers in the BRV archive for UNTs from various test sites is given in Table 1 and are plotted in Figure 1.

A major digital seismogram archive at Borovoye is being reformatted into a modern format suitable for analysis and preservation. Since 1991, the authors at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) and at the Institute for Dynamics of Geosphere (IDG), Moscow have worked hard under the auspices of the IRIS Consortium, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Defense Threat Reduction Agency, U.S. Department of Defense, International Science and Technology Center (ISTC), Moscow, and other organizations to preserve the 30 years of digital seismogram archive at BRV (see a feature article in EOS by Richards, Kim and Ekström, 1992).

This release of the BRV digital seismogram data archive results from nearly 10 years of hard work by many engineers and analysts at IDG, Moscow. Drs. Nadezhda Belyashova and Natalia Mikhailova at the Institute of Geophysical Research, National Nuclear Center (NNC), Republic of Kazakstan helped to complete the BRV archive tape presevation project. Drs. Gregory van der Vink and David Simpson at the IRIS Consortium provided important help during the early years of the BRV archive preservation project. This note describes certain information regarding these waveform data archive and provides basic parameters needed to analyze them.

 

 
Table 1: Borovoye Archive of World-wide Underground Nuclear Tests, 1966-1996
Country Test site Time period BRV data
USSR Semipalatinsk Test Site 1966 Dec 18 - 1989 Oct 19 228
  Novaya Zemlya 1967 Oct 21 - 1990 Oct 24 31
  Peaceful Nuclear Explosions 1967 Oct 06 - 1988 Sep 06 80
China Lop Nor Test Site 1970 Sep 22 - 1995 May 15 11
France Tuamotu Archipelago 1977 Mar 19 - 1996 Jan 27 68
United Kingdom Nevada Test Site 1978 Apr 11 - 1989 Dec 08 15
United States Nevada Test Site 1967 May 23 - 1992 Mar 26 278
 Total number of UNTs in the BRV archive 711


¡ WorldNuclearTests

Figure 1: The Borovoye archive for world-wide underground nuclear tests (stars) during 1966-1996.


Won-Young Kim
April, 2001