Digital Seismology

How does a seismometer work? What output does it provide based on the ground motion we feel with our feet? This class is designed for students in the first year of the M. Sc. Geosciences program who want to gain a deeper theoretical and practical understanding of seismometers. Seismometers are the basis of seismological studies, and a basic understanding is very useful for any other classes or future projects using seismological data. This class will for example provide you with guidelines on the processing steps needed if recordings from different seismometers should be used in the same study e.g. for an earthquake location. And it will shed light on the metainformation you get alongside your seismic data, that describes the sensor type, the internal filters used and the station location. As these metainformation are sometimes not correct even if downloaded from a public database, we will dive into typical errors you might encounter.

As seismological data are time series, the concepts such as filter theory, description of filters using Fourier, Laplace, and Z-transforms and sampling pitfalls such as aliasing are also relevant in other geoscientific disciplines that work with time series.