[magnitudes] Mwpd: document low-magnitude usage guidance#129
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A. Lomax noted (pers. comm., 2026-07-23) that Early-est deliberately does not report/alert Mwpd below ~M7 (alert.mwpd_min, default 6.95) and only sets it as the preferred magnitude above ~M8 (preferred.min_value.mwpd), addressing the small low-magnitude bias jsaul flagged in review. SeisComP's scevent has no value-gated preferred-magnitude mechanism (only a static per-type priority list), so this is documented as operator guidance rather than implemented in code.
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Summary
Small documentation-only follow-up to #125.
During review of #125, Anthony Lomax (author of the original Mwpd method, Lomax & Michelini 2009) reached out by personal communication about the small low-magnitude bias discussed in that review. He noted that Early-est itself is deliberately conservative with Mwpd at smaller magnitudes:
alert.mwpd_min, default 6.95)preferred.min_value.mwpd), and suggested this could reasonably be lowered to ~7.5This was written up as a commit on the
feature/mwpd-magnitudebranch before #125 merged, but the commit was not pushed in time and missed the merge. This PR carries that same change forward against currentmain.Adds a paragraph to
global_mwpd.rstdocumenting the guidance, attributed to A. Lomax (pers. comm., 2026). SeisComP's own preferred-magnitude selection (scevent) is a static per-type priority list rather than a value-gated threshold, so this is operator guidance rather than a code change — no functional changes in this PR.Test plan
mainpost-[magnitudes] Add Mwpd duration-amplitude moment magnitude plugin #125 merge,rstbuilds without errors