Classification of seismic events using linear discriminant function (LDF) in the Sakarya region, Turkey

The Sakarya prefecture is an interesting area with various seismicity types. This activity comes from earthquakes occurring at the North Anatolian Fault Zone and from a few quarry blast areas in the region. These quarry blast recordings produce errors in the determination of active faults and mapping of the microearthquake activity. Therefore, to recognize the tectonic activity in the region, we need to be able to discriminate between earthquakes and quarry blasts in the catalogues. In this study, a statistical analysis method (linear discriminant function) has been applied to classify seismic events occurring in the Sakarya region. We used 110 seismic events that were recorded by Sakarya University Seismic Station between 2012 and 2014. Time and frequency variant parameters, maximum S wave and maximum P wave amplitude ratio (S/P), the spectral ratio (Sr), maximum frequency (fmax), and total signal duration of the waveform were used for discrimination analyses. The maximum frequency (fmax) versus time duration of the seismic signal gives a higher classification percentage (94%) than the other discriminants. At the end of this study, 41 out of 110 events (44%) are determined as quarry blasts, and 62 (56%) are considered as earthquakes.