Seismological Society of America

Abstract The May 2012 HUMBLE REDWOOD ffl (HRUI) experiment series in New Mexico provides a unique dataset to study surface-wave generation from explosions conducted above and underground for different rock types. Four 90.6 kg trinitrotolueneequivalent explosions were detonated either at 2 m height-of-burst (HOB) or 7 m depthof- burial (DOB) at separate alluvium and limestone test sites. For the alluvium site, data from a temporary seismoacoustic network show that fundamental-mode surface waves (Kg) from the 7 m DOB in-alluvium shot were four to five times larger than the abovealluvium shot. The Rg amplitudes from the 7 m DOB limestone shot were 15 timeslarger than Rg recorded from the collocated 2 m HOB shot. To model these differences in Rg, we generated ID velocity models for both test sites using observed surface-wave dispersion. We considered two different methods for synthetic seismogram generation. For the aboveground shots, we have coupled near-field blast wave pressures and shapes with source medium properties to modelseismic data at distance. For the underground shots, we use explosion source theory to estimate a moment for scaling explosion synthetics. For both above and underground shots, the synthetics provide excellent fits to the observed 1-5 Hz Rg data. This modelling provides a viable technique to predict peak particle velocities for surface and aboveground explosions in different rock types that can be used to estimate combined seismoacoustic yields.