Long-term seismic noise investigations on Shikotan Island: First results

In 2003–2004, long-term seismic noise observations were launched on Shikotan Island (Lesser Kuril Range) based on the “Shikotan” dormant regional seismic station. The geological and geophysical data on the registration area are reported. Information about the equipment and its technical specifications is given. The precursors to the strongest local earthquakesthat occurred in the Shikotan Island region in January 2005–March 2007 are identified.     

震灾保险研究中的软科学问题

震灾保险研究融会着自然科学与社会科学的紧密结合和相互渗透,基于这一认识,本文联系震灾保险的社会属性,分析并指出这一险种的非强制性质;保护应用的权益与责任;对社会不规范投保行为的制约;正确理解“与国际惯例接轨”、地震系统的协作模式、政府部门的政策导向等等带有根本性的问题,以启示人们把握研究的大方向,从而加快我国该项研究的实用化进程。     

研究“源兆”的若干问题及途径分析

从位场理论的观点讨论了场和源的概念,建议将“场兆”改称为构造前兆,将“源兆”称为震源前兆。文中还分析了震源体与各种前兆观测方法探测的深度,并根据地磁与重力观测方法不同的物理基础和地质基础,指出震磁效应对于研究震源前兆的特殊意义,文中还介绍了１９７６唐山地震观测到震源前兆的部分实际地磁资料。     

The Epi－continental arc of Southeast China and relevant earthquakes

ＴｈｅＥｐｉ┐ｃｏｎｔｉｎｅｎｔａｌａｒｃｏｆＳｏｕｔｈｅａｓｔＣｈｉｎａａｎｄｒｅｌｅｖａｎｔｅａｒｔｈｑｕａｋｅｓＪＩＡ－ＷＥＩＸＵ（徐嘉炜）ＤｅｐａｒｔｍｅｎｔｏｆＲｅｓｏｕｒｃｅａｎｄＥｎｖｉｒｏｎｍｅｎｔａｌＳｃｉｅｎｃｅｓ,ＨｅｆｅｉＵ...     

北京及邻区微震活动的初步分析

通过对北京遥测地震台网近年来记录到的北京及邻区地震的震中分布,地震活动频度及能量释放强度的分析,得到本区地震活动在时间分布上具有“聚堆性”。在年发震频度,地震强度和能释放方面均具有双峰值特征,并且具有较好的一致性和同步性,在空间分布上具有条带特征,且形成北东～南西和北西～南东的两条相互交汇的条带。又通过统计分析得到本区发震概率最大的时间段是每年的１０月前后,而地震主要发生在北西～南东带上。     

Rupture process of large earthquakes in the northern Mexico subduction zone

The Cocos plate subducts beneath North America at the Mexico trench. The northernmost segment of this trench, between the Orozco and Rivera fracture zones, has ruptured in a sequence of five large earthquakes from 1973 to 1985; the Jan. 30, 1973 Colima event (M _s 7.5) at the northern end of the segment near Rivera fracture zone; the Mar. 14, 1979 Petatlan event (M _s 7.6) at the southern end of the segment on the Orozco fracture zone; the Oct. 25, 1981 Playa Azul event (M _s 7.3) in the middle of the Michoacan gap; the Sept. 19, 1985 Michoacan mainshock (M _s 8.1); and the Sept. 21, 1985 Michoacan aftershock (M _s 7.6) that reruptured part of the Petatlan zone. Body wave inversion for the rupture process of these earthquakes finds the best: earthquake depth; focal mechanism; overall source time function; and seismic moment, for each earthquake. In addition, we have determined spatial concentrations of seismic moment release for the Colima earthquake, and the Michoacan mainshock and aftershock. These spatial concentrations of slip are interpreted as asperities; and the resultant asperity distribution for Mexico is compared to other subduction zones. The body wave inversion technique also determines theMoment Tensor Rate Functions; but there is no evidence for statistically significant changes in the moment tensor during rupture for any of the five earthquakes. An appendix describes theMoment Tensor Rate Functions methodology in detail.The systematic bias between global and regional determinations of epicentral locations in Mexico must be resolved to enable plotting of asperities with aftershocks and geographic features. We have spatially shifted all of our results to regional determinations of epicenters. The best point source depths for the five earthquakes are all above 30 km, consistent with the idea that the down-dip edge of the seismogenic plate interface in Mexico is shallow compared to other subduction zones. Consideration of uncertainties in the focal mechanisms allows us to state that all five earthquakes occurred on fault planes with the same strike (N65°W to N70°W) and dip (15±3°), except for the smaller Playa Azul event at the down-dip edge which has a steeper dip angle of 20 to 25°. However, the Petatlan earthquake does prefer a fault plane that is rotated to a more east-west orientation—one explanation may be that this earthquake is located near the crest of the subducting Orozco fracture zone. The slip vectors of all five earthquakes are similar and generally consistent with the NUVEL-predicted Cocos-North America convergence direction of N33°E for this segment. The most important deviation is the more northerly slip direction for the Petatlan earthquake. Also, the slip vectors from the Harvard CMT solutions for large and small events in this segment prefer an overall convergence direction of about N20°E to N25°E.All five earthquakes share a common feature in the rupture process: each earthquake has a small initial precursory arrival followed by a large pulse of moment release with a distinct onset. The delay time varies from 4 s for the Playa Azul event to 8 s for the Colima event. While there is some evidence of spatial concentration of moment release for each event, our overall asperity distribution for the northern Mexico segment consists of one clear asperity, in the epicentral region of the 1973 Colima earthquake, and then a scattering of diffuse and overlapping regions of high moment release for the remainder of the segment. This character is directly displayed in the overlapping of rupture zones between the 1979 Petatlan event and the 1985 Michoacan aftershock. This character of the asperity distribution is in contrast to the widely spaced distinct asperities in the northern Japan-Kuriles Islands subduction zone, but is somewhat similar to the asperity distributions found in the central Peru and Santa Cruz Islands subduction zones. Subduction of the Orozco fracture zone may strongly affect the seismogenic character as the overlapping rupture zones are located on the crest of the subducted fracture zone. There is also a distinct change in the physiography of the upper plate that coincides with the subducting fracture zone, and the Guerrero seismic gap to the south of the Petatlan earthquake is in the wake of the Orozco fracture zone. At the northern end, the Rivera fracture zone in the subducting plate and the Colima graben in the upper plate coincide with the northernmost extent of the Colima rupture zone.     

Energy balance of simple elastodynamic sources

Complete relations are derived for energy and energy flux of elastic waves generated by an isotropic and double-couple source in a perfectly elastic, homogeneous, isotropic, and unbounded medium. In the energy balance of elastodynamic sources near-field waves play an essential role, transforming static energy into wave energy, andvice versa. For explosive and dislocation sources, the sources surface radiates a positive wave energy that is partially distributed to the medium transforming into static energy. For implosive and antidislocation sources, the source surface generates elastic waves, but it does not necessarily imply that it also radiates a positive wave energy. The energy transported by waves can originate in gradual transformation of the static-to-wave energy during propagation of waves through a stressed medium.On leave from Geophysical Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences, Boní II/1401, 41 31, Praha 4 Czech Republic     

Earthquake rupture complexity due to dynamic nucleation and interaction of subsidiary faults

We numerically study the dynamic interaction of propagating cracks. It is assumed that propagating cracks can nucleate and drive subsidiary cracks because of shear strain enhancement near the propagating crack tips. The critical strain fracture criterion is assumed in the analysis. Intense interaction is expected to occur among the cracks. All the cracks are assumed to be parallel and antiplane strain deformation is assumed in the computation.In the interaction of two non-coplanar cracks, a strain shadow is formed in the neighborhood of each crack because of the strain release by the introduction of the crack. The growth of each crack is accelerated when the propagating tips of each crack are outside of the strain shadow of the other crack. In general, the crack tips enter the strain shadow, and the crack tips decelerate. The calculation shows that only one of the two cracks can continue to grow, and the other's growth is decelerated and arrested. If we can assume that the suite of cracks interact in a pairwise manner only, then this may suggest that only a limited number of cracks can continue to grow during the final stage of the rupture process. Hence the crack interaction causes complexity in dynamic earthquake faulting. The concepts of barrier and asperity have been employed by many researchers for the interpretation of complex seismic wave data. However, the physical realities of such concepts are obscure. Our calculations show that dynamic crack interactions can produce barriers and asperities in some cases; the crack tip deceleration or arrest due to the interactions among non-coplanar cracks can be interpreted as being due to a barrier. The dynamic coalescence among the coplanar cracks can be regarded as an asperity.Umeda found a localized area that strongly radiates high-frequency seismic waves in the epicentral areas of some large shallow earthquakes. He defined this as an earthquake bright spot. Our analysis implies that only a limited number of cracks continue to grow when many interactive cracks nucleate, and that all other cracks stop extending soon after nucleation. Hence, if the nucleation and termination of several cracks occur in a localized area, it will be observed seismologically as an earthquake bright spot. This is because it is theoretically known that the sudden termination of crack growth and dynamic crack coalescence efficiently emits high-frequency elastic waves.     

Blind prediction of the site effects at Ashigara Valley,Japan, and its comparison with reality

Weak and strong ground motions were numerically predicted for three stations of the Ashigara Valley test site. The prediction was based on the records from a rock-outcrop station, one weak-motion record from a surface-sediments station, and the standard geotechnical model. The data were provided by the Japanese Working Group on the Effects of Surface Geology as a part of an international experiment. The finite-difference method for SH waves in a 2-D linear viscoelastic medium (a causalQ model) was employed.Comparison with the real records shows that at two stations the predictions fit better than at the third one. Strangely, the two better predictions were for stations situated at larger distances from the reference rock station (one station was on the surface, the other in a borehole). The strong ground motion (the peak acceleration of about 200 cm s^–2) was not predicted qualitatively worse than the weak motion (8 cm s^–2). A less sophisticated second prediction (not submitted during the experiment), in which we did not attempt to fit the available weak-motion record at the sedimentary station, agrees with the reality significantly better.     

Automatic equipment to monitor groundwater radon

Prototype instrumentation, able to automatically measure groundwater radon content variations, is presented. The equipment is made of stainless steel and has spherical valves with automatic and pneumatic control. The deemanation of the gases from the water is obtained by evacuating a suitable expansion chamber. The instrumentation can make discrete sampling ranging from 1 per hour to 1 per 99 hours. The equipment was tested in the laboratory: the efficiency was measured by means of a²⁶⁶Ra solution. A mean value of (0.65±0.07) count/s/Bq was obtained. A calibration test was carried out by comparing countings from the automatic equipment with those obtained by the standard laboratory cell. Results of an operational check over a period of approximately one year indicate that variations in radon at the calibration site are attributable more to meteorological than to tectonic causes.