Relocating a Cluster of Earthquakes Using a Single Seismic Station

Coda waves arise from scattering to form the later arriving components of a seismogram. Coda-wave interferometry (CWI) is an emerging tool for constraining earthquake source properties from the interference pattern of coda waves between nearby events. A new earthquake location algorithm is derived which relies on coda-wave-based probabilistic estimates of earthquake separation. The algorithm can be used with coda waves alone or in tandem with arrival-time data. Synthetic examples (2D and 3D) and real earthquakes on the Calaveras fault, California, are used to demonstrate the potential of coda waves for locating poorly recorded earthquakes. It is demonstrated that CWI: (a) outperforms traditional earthquake location techniques when the number of stations is small; (b) is self-consistent across a broad range of station situations; and (c) can be used with a single station to locate earthquakes.