The Charyn cluster is named for the Charyn Canyon National Park in the
Almaty region of eastern Kazakhstan. The cluster includes a set of
events close to the canyon, but also includes some earthquakes (which
are generally larger) to the east, along the Kazakhstan-China border.
The cluster includes two magnitude 6+ events, 6.0 Mw on December 1, 2003
and 6.2 Mw on January 28, 2013. Some events are small and recorded only
to near-regional distances, but they were retained to improve the
location calibration. Earthquakes prior to about 2003 are poorly
connected to the more recent events that have good local coverage, and
therefore could not be included in the cluster. All events have depth
control from near-source and local-distance observations and some have
teleseismic depth phases that are reasonable agreement. This cluster
exhibits greater than usual variability in travel time residuals, which
especially complicates depth estimation. This is likely a consequence of
especially severe crustal structure variations.
