An Earthquake Detection and Location Architecture for Continuous Seismograms: Phase Picking, Association, Location, and Matched Filter (PALM)

Abstract We developed an earthquake detection and location architecture for continuous seismograms that incorporates phase picking, phase association, location, and matched-filter techniques (PALM). The PALM architecture incorporates two modules: (1) PAL, the initial detection following picking, association, and location processes, and (2) match, expand, shift, and stack (MESS), a matched-filter detector that augments the template catalog. The effectiveness of PALM is demonstrated in building an early aftershock catalog for the 2019 Ridgecrest, California, earthquake. By comparing with Southern California Seismic Network arrival times, we show that the PAL picker combines the strengths of short-term average/long-term average and the kurtosis picker, realizing robust phase detection and precise picking. Our final MESS catalog is compared with two other matched-filter catalogs by Ross, Idini, et al. (2019) and Shelly (2020). We find that PALM directly recovers unbiased and detailed features in seismicity from continuous seismograms, which can be efficiently implemented to scan continuous waveforms without the need for visual inspection.