The use of modern statistical theories in the assessment of earthquake hazard, with application to quiet regions of eastern North America

It is generally accepted that both deterministic and statistical approaches are useful for the characterization of earthquake hazard. Although the most reliable estimates of seismic hazard can only be based on an improved understanding of the earthquake mechanism, efficient utilization of the appropriate methods provided by recent statistical theories is also important in seismic risk analysis. This is especially true in regions where the connection between seismicity and geologic structure is tenuous at best. We are particularly interested in developing better statistical treatments of data for regions with little known seismic activity. To this end, we have applied three statistical methods to the historical record of seismicity in relatively quiet regions of eastern North America. These are: (1) the threshold method for tail inference, a new theory for modeling earthquakes with sizes above a given threshold, (2) the ‘bootstrap’ technique in which the characteristics of an unknown population are simulated by replacing the true population by an estimated one, and (3) a technique to estimate the number of earthquakes below a given size, in order to compensate for the under-reporting of small earthquakes in most catalogs. A combination of these techniques has been used to estimate the probabilities of future large earthquakes for the regions studied. Because of limitations imposed by existing catalogs, the size estimate used has been maximum intensity.     

Reconciling pyroclastic flow and surge: the multiphase physics of pyroclastic density currents

Two end-member types of pyroclastic density current are commonly recognized: pyroclastic surges are dilute currents in which particles are carried in turbulent suspension and pyroclastic flows are highly concentrated flows. We provide scaling relations that unify these end-members and derive a segregation mechanism into basal concentrated flow and overriding dilute cloud based on the Stokes number (S_T), the stability factor (Σ_T) and the dense-dilute condition (D_D). We recognize five types of particle behaviors within a fluid eddy as a function of S_T and Σ_T: (1) particles sediment from the eddy, (2) particles are preferentially settled out during the downward motion of the eddy, but can be carried during its upward motion, (3) particles concentrate on the periphery of the eddy, (4) particles settling can be delayed or ‘fast-tracked’ as a function of the eddy spatial distribution, and (5) particles remain homogeneously distributed within the eddy. We extend these concepts to a fully turbulent flow by using a prototype of kinetic energy distribution within a full eddy spectrum and demonstrate that the presence of different particle sizes leads to the density stratification of the current. This stratification may favor particle interactions in the basal part of the flow and D_D determines whether the flow is dense or dilute. Using only intrinsic characteristics of the current, our model explains the discontinuous features between pyroclastic flows and surges while conserving the concept of a continuous spectrum of density currents.     

Bedrock structure in Adapazari, Turkey—a possible cause of severe damage by the 1999 Kociaeli earthquake

The 1999 Kocaeli earthquake brought serious damage to downtown of Adapazari. To study why strong motions were generated at the town, a bedrock structure was investigated on the basis of Bouguer gravity anomaly, and SPAC and H/V analyses of microseisms. It was revealed that, the basin consists of three narrow depressions of bedrock with very steep edges, extending in E–W or NE–SW directions along the North Anatolia faults, and the depth to bedrock reaches 1000 m or more. Downtown of Adapazari is located 1–2 km apart from the basin-edge. It is considered that, the specific configuration of bedrock amplifies ground motions at the downtown area by focusing of seismic waves and/or interference between incident S-waves and surface-waves secondarily generated at the basin-edge. Studying 3D bedrock structure is an urgent issue for microzoning an urban area in a sedimentary basin.     

Efficient methods for solving water flow in variably saturated soils under prescribed flux infiltration

The non-linear solvers in numerical solutions of water flow in variably saturated soils are prone to convergence difficulties. Many aspects can give rise to such difficulties and in this paper we address the gravity term and the prescribed-flux boundary in the Picard iteration. The problem of the gravity term in the Picard iteration is iteration-to-iteration oscillation as the gravity term is treated, by analogy with the time-step advance technique, ‘explicitly’ in the iteration. The proposed method for the gravity term is an improvement of the ‘implicit’ approach of Zhang and Ewen [Water Resour. Res. 36 (2000) 2777] by extending it to heterogeneous soil and approximating the inter-nodal hydraulic conductivity in the diffusive term and the gravity term with the same scheme. The prescribed-flux boundary in traditional methods also gives rise to iteration-to-iteration oscillation because there is no feedback to the flux in the solution at the new iteration. To reduce such oscillation, a new method is proposed to provide such a feedback to the flux. Comparison with traditional Picard and Newton iteration methods for a wide range of problems show that a combination of these two proposed methods greatly improves the stability and consequently the computational efficiency, making the use of small time step and/or under-relaxation solely for convergence unnecessary.     

Improved treatments for evaluating horizontal magnetic components through the 3-D FDM in E -polarization induction problems

To improve the accuracy of the numerical evaluation through the 3-D finite difference method, the surface boundary conditions are added to modify the old program. The author has tested the new program by making calculations for the model constructed by Wanamaker, et al (1984). The comparison between the numerical results obtained from this paper and those by Wannamaker, et al (1984) indicates that a pronounced improvement is realized in the evaluation of the horizontal magnetic components. Moreover, better calculations for the vertical magnetic components are also obtainable by using the new program.     

探测大城市活断层的地球物理方法

简要地介绍了开展大城市地震活断层探测的意义及世界各国开展活断层探测的基本情况。城市及邻近地区地震活断层引起的直下型地震 ,将会给大城市造成巨大的地震灾害。准确地探测出大城市的活断层分布 ,采取有效措施 ,可大大降低地震时的损失。文中重点介绍了开展地震活断层探测的地球物理方法的类型和主要特点 ,在区域探查与初步鉴定阶段、详细探测与精确定位阶段、孕震构造探测阶段可能涉及到的各种地球物理探测方法、适用范围及所能解决的主要问题     

疏勒河流域昌马灌区泉水量预测分析

疏勒河流域农业灌溉主要采用地表水灌溉 ,泉水为该区农业灌溉的主要水源之一 ,该文利用 2 0世纪 90年代的测流资料 ,采用有限差分方法对疏勒河中游泉水量的变化趋势进行预测分析 ,结果显示 ,随着时间的延长 ,泉流量呈逐渐减小的趋势 ,但下降梯度逐渐变小 ,最终趋于稳定