n.

The geophysical science of earthquakes and the mechanical properties of the earth.

seismologic seis'mo·log'ic (-mə-lŏj'ĭk) or seis'mo·log'i·cal (-ĭ-kəl) adj.
seismologically seis'mo·log'i·cal·ly adv.
seismologist seis·mol'o·gist n.

Concept

Disturbances within Earth's interior, which is in a constant state of movement, result in the release of energy in packets known as seismic waves. An area of geophysics known as seismology is the study of these waves and their effects, which often can be devastating when experienced in the form of earthquakes. The latter do not only take lives and destroy buildings, but they also produce secondary effects, most often in the form of a tsunami, or tidal wave. Using seismographs and seismometers, seismologists study earthquakes and other seismic phenomena, including volcanoes and even explosions resulting from nuclear testing. They measure earthquakes according to their magnitude or energy as well as their intensity or human impact. Seismology also is used to study Earth's interior, about which it has revealed a great deal.

How It Works

Stress and Strain in Earth's Interior

Modern earth scientists' studies in seismology, as in many other areas, are informed by plate tectonics, and to understand the causes of earthquakes and volcanoes, it is necessary to understand the basics of tectonics as well as plate tectonics theory. The latter subject is discussed in depth within a separate essay, which the reader is encouraged to consult for a more detailed explanation of concepts covered briefly here.

The term tectonism refers to deformation of the lithosphere, the upper layer of Earth's interior. Tectonics is the study of this deformation, which results from the release and redistribution of energy from Earth's core. The core is an extremely dense region, composed primarily of iron and another, lighter element (possibly sulfur), and is divided between a solid inner core with a radius of about 760 mi. (1,220 km) and a liquid outer core about 1,750 mi. (2,820 km) thick.

Earth's core possesses enormous energy, both gravitational and thermal. Gravitational energy is a result of the core's great mass (see Gravity and Geodesy for more about the role of mass in gravity), while thermal energy results from the radioactive decay of elements. In the context of radioactivity, decay does not mean "rot" rather, it refers to the release of high-energy particles. The release of these particles results in the generation of thermal energy, commonly referred to as heat. (See Energy and Earth for more about the scientific definition of heat as well as a discussion of geothermal energy.)

Differences in mass and temperature within the planet's interior, known as pressure gradients, result in the deformation of rocks in the lithosphere. The lithosphere includes the brittle upper portion of the mantle, a dense layer of rock approximately 1,429 mi. (2,300 km) thick, as well as the crust, which varies in depth from 3 mi. to 37 mi. (5-60 km). Deformation is the result of stress—that is, tension (stretching), compression, or shear. (The last of these stresses results from equal and opposite forces that do not act along the same line. To visualize shear, one need only imagine a thick hardbound book with its front cover pushed from the side so that the covers and pages are no longer perfectly aligned.)

Under the effects of these stresses, rocks experience strain, or a change in dimension as they bend, warp, slide, break, flow as though they were liquids, or melt. This strain, in turn, leads to a release of energy in the form of seismic waves. These waves may cause faults, or fractures, as well as folds, or bends in the rock structure, which manifest on the surface in the form of earthquakes, volcanoes, and other varieties of seismic activity. Seismology is the study of these waves as well as the movements and vibrations that produce them.

Continental Drift and Plate Tectonics

The theory of continental drift, discussed in Plate Tectonics, is based on the idea that the configuration of Earth's continents was once different thanit is today. Integral to this theory is the accompanying idea that some of the individual land masses of today once were joined in other continental forms and that the land masses later moved totheir present locations.

Continental drift theory was introduced in 1915 by the German geophysicist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener (1880-1930), but it failed to gain acceptance for half a century, in large part because it offered no explanation as to how the continents drifted. That explanation came in the 1960s with the development of plate tectonics, the name both of a theory and of a specialization of tectonics. As an area of study, plate tectonics deals with the large features of the lithosphere and the forces that shape them. As a theory, it explains the processes that have shaped Earth in terms of plates (large movable segments of the lithosphere) and their movement.

The Plates and Seismic Activity

There are several major plates, some of which are listed in Plate Tectonics. That essay also discusses modern theories regarding the means by which continents broke apart many millions of years ago and then drifted back together, slamming into one another to form a number of notable features, such as the high mountains between the Indian subcontinent and the Eurasian landmass. Nor have the continents stopped moving; they continue to do so, though at a rate too slow to be noticed in a lifetime or even over the course of several generations. Based on its current rate of movement, in another 6,000 years—approximately the span of time since human civilization began—North America will have drifted about 600 ft. (183 m).

For the most part, the continents we know today are composed of single plates. For instance, South America sits on its own plate, which includes the southwestern quadrant of the Atlantic. But there are exceptions, an example being India itself, which is part of the Indo-Australian plate. Also notable is the Juan de Fuca Plate, a small portion of land attached to the North American continent and comprising the region from northern California to southern British Columbia.

It so happens that this area is home to an unusual amount of volcanic activity. Southern California, where the North American and Pacific plates meet on the San Andreas fault, also is extremely prone to earthquakes, as is Japan, whose islands straddle the Philippine, Eurasian, and Pacific plates. Hawaii is another site of seismic activity in the form of volcanoes, but it does not lie at the nexus of any major plates. Instead, it is situated squarely atop the Pacific Plate, which is moving northward over a hot spot, a region of high volcanic activity. The hot spot remains more or less stationary, while the Pacific Plate moves across it; this explains why the volcanoes of northern Hawaii are generally dormant, whereas many volcanoes in the southern part of the island chain are still active.

Plates interact by moving toward each other (convergence), away from each other (divergence), or past each other (transform motion). When a continental plate converges with an oceanic plate (the differences between these types are discussed in Plate Tectonics), the much sturdier continental plate plows over the oceanic one. This is called subduction. The subducted plate undergoes partial melting, leading to the formation of volcanic chains, as in the nexus of the Juan de Fuca and Pacific or the South American and Nazca plates. The subduction of the Nazca Plate, which lies to the west of South America, helped form the Andes. Transform margins result in the formation of faults and earthquake zones, an example being the volatile San Andreas Fault.

Seismic Waves

The first scientific description of seismic waves was that of John William Strutt, Baron Rayleigh (1842-1919), who in 1885 characterized them as having aspects both of longitudinal and of transverse waves. These are, respectively, waves in which the movement of vibration is in the same direction as the wave itself and those in which the vibration or motion is perpendicular to the direction in which the wave is moving. (Ocean waves, for example, are longitudinal, whereas sound waves are transverse.)

Rayleigh waves later would be distinguished from Love waves, named after the English mathematician and geophysicist Augustus Edward Hough Love (1863-1940). The motion of Love waves is entirely horizontal, or longitudinal. Both are examples of surface waves, or seismic waves whose line of propagation is along the surface of a medium, such as the solid earth. These waves tend to be slower and more destructive than body waves, defined as waves whose line of propagation is through the body of a medium. Body waves include P-waves (primary waves), which are extremely fast moving and longitudinal, and S-waves (secondary waves), which move somewhat less fast and are transverse. The respective waves' rates of propagation through the solid earth are as follows:

• P-waves: about 4 mi. (6.4 km) per second
• S-waves: about 2 mi. (3.2 km) per second
• Rayleigh and Love waves: less than 2 mi. per second

Real-Life Applications

The Lisbon Quake and Its Effects

On November 1, 1755, the Portuguese capital of Lisbon became the site of one of the worst earthquakes in European history. The event had a number of aftereffects, natural and immediate as well as human and longer term. The results from nature were devastating; the earthquake caused a tsunami, or tidal wave, that flooded the Tagus River even as a fire, also caused by the earthquake, raged through the city.

Estimates of the deaths related directly or indirectly to the Lisbon quake range from 10,000 to as many as 60,000, making it the worst European earthquake since 1531. That earlier quake, incidentally, also had occurred in Lisbon—another example of the fact that certain areas are more prone to seismic activity. It so happens that Portugal lies near the boundary between the Eurasian and African plates.

As for the human response to the quake, it is best represented by the French writer Voltaire (1694-1778). Always a critic of religious faith, Voltaire saw in the incident evidence that called into question Christians' belief in a loving God. He made this case both in the philosophical poem Le désastre de Lisbonne (The disaster of Lisbon, 1756) and, more memorably, in the satirical novel Candide (1759).

Michell and the Birth of Seismology

Another, much less famous, thinker responded to the Lisbon earthquake in quite a different fashion. This was English geologist and astronomer John Michell (ca. 1724-1793), who studied the event and concluded that quakes are accompanied by shock waves. In an article published in 1760, he noted that earthquakes are found to occur near volcanoes and suggested that they are caused by pressure produced by water that boils from volcanic heat. He also indicated that one can calculate the center of an earthquake by making note of the time at which the motions are felt.

Today Michell is regarded as the father of seismology, a discipline that began to mature in the nineteenth century. The name itself was coined by the Irish engineer Robert Mallet (1810-1881), who in 1846 compiled the first modern catalogue of earthquakes. Eleven years after publishing the book, which listed all known quakes of any significance since 1606 B.C., Mallet conducted experiments with shock waves by exploding gunpowder and measuring the rate at which the waves travel through various types of material.

Detecting and Measuring Seismic Activity

As noted earlier, seismology is concerned with seismic waves, which generally are caused by movements within the solid earth. These waves also may be produced by man-made sources. Seismologic studies assist miners in knowing how much dynamite to use for a quarry blast so as to be effective without destroying the mine itself or the resources being sought. In addition, seismology can be used to reveal the location of such materials as coal and oil.

Thanks to seismometers (instruments for detecting seismic waves) and seismographs, which record information regarding those waves, seismologists are able to detect not only natural seismic activity but also the effects of underground nuclear testing. Underground testing is banned by international treaty, and if a "rogue nation" were to conduct such testing, it would come to the attention of the World-Wide Standardized Seismograph Network (WWSSN), which consists of 120 seismic stations in some 60 countries.

Most of the remainder of this essay is devoted to a single type of seismic phenomenon: earthquakes. As noted, they are far from the only effect of seismic activity; however, they are the most prevalent and well documented. A close second would be volcanoes, which are discussed in the essay Mountains.

Early Seismographic Instruments

In A.D. 132, the Chinese scientist Chang Heng (78-139) constructed what may have been the first seismographic instrument, which was designed to detect not only the presence of seismic activity but also the direction from which it came. His invention ultimately was discarded, however, and understanding of earthquakes progressed little for more than 1,600 years.

The first crude seismograph was invented in 1703 by the French physicist Jean de Hautefeuille (1647-1724), long before Michell formally established a connection between shock waves and earthquakes. Historians date the starting point of modern seismographic monitoring, however, to an 1880 invention by the English geologist John Milne (1850-1913). Milne's creation, the first precise seismograph, measured motion with a horizontal pendulum attached to a pen that recorded movement on a revolving drum. Milne used his device to record earthquakes from as far away as Japan and helped establish seismologic stations around the world. The first modern seismograph in the United States was installed at the University of California at Berkeley and proved its accuracy in recording the 1906 San Francisco quake, discussed later in this essay.

Magnitude: the Richter Scale

An earthquake can be measured according to either its magnitude or its intensity. The first refers to the amount of energy released by the earthquake, and its best-known scale of measurement is the Richter scale. Developed in 1935 by the American geophysicist Charles Richter (1900-1985), the Richter scale is logarithmic rather than arithmetic, meaning that increases in value involve multiplication rather than addition.

The numbers on the Richter scale, from 1.0 to 10.0, should be thought of as exponents rather than integers. Each whole-number increase represents a tenfold increase in the amplitude (size from crest to trough) of the seismic wave. Therefore 2.0 is not twice as much as 1.0; it is 10 times as much. To go from 1.0 to 3.0 is an increase by a factor of 100, and to go from 1.0 to 4.0 indicates an increase by a factor of 1,000. The scales of magnitude thus become ever greater, and while a whole-number increase on the Richter scale indicates an increase of amplitude by a factor of 10, it represents an increase of energy by a factor of about 31.

Intensity: the Mercalli Scale

The amplitude and energy measured by the Richter scale are objective and quantitative, whereas intensity is more subjective and qualitative. Intensity, an indication of the earthquake's effect on human beings and structures, is measured by the Mercalli scale, named after the Italian seismologist Giuseppe Mercalli (1850-1914). The 12 levels on the Mercalli scale range from I, which means that few people felt the quake, to XII, which indicates total damage. A few comparisons serve to illustrate the scales' relationship to each other.

A score of I on the Mercalli scale equates to a value between 1.0 and a 3.0 on the Richter scale and indicates a tremor felt only by a very few people under very specific circumstances. At 5.0 to 5.9 on the Richter scale (VI to VII on the Mercalli scale), everyone feels the earthquake, and many people are frightened, but only the most poorly built structures are damaged significantly. Above 7.0 on the Richter scale and VIII on the Mercalli scale, wooden and then masonry structures collapse, as do bridges, while railways are bent completely out of shape. In populated areas, as we shall see, the death toll can be enormous.

Famous Quakes

The great San Francisco earthquake, which struck on April 18, 1906, spawned a massive fire, and these events resulted in the deaths of some 700 people, including 270 inmates of a mental institution. Another 300,000 people were left homeless, and 490 city blocks were destroyed. Ultimately, the financial impact of the San Francisco quake proved to be one of the contributing factors in the March 13, 1907, stock market crash that played a key role in the panic of 1907.

At 5:04 P.M. on October 17, 1989, another quake struck San Francisco. It lasted just 15 seconds, long enough to kill some 90 people and cause $6 billion in property damage. Though it was the biggest quake since the 1906 tremor, it was much smaller: 7.19 on the Richter scale, or about one-fifth of the 7.7 measured for the 1906 quake. The 1989 Loma Prieta quake cost much more than the earlier tragedy, which had caused $500 million in damage, but, of course, half a billion dollars in 1906 was worth a great deal more than $6 billion 83 years later.

Neither earthquake, however, was the greatest in American history; in fact, the 1989 quake does not rank among the top 15, even for the continental United States. The eight worst earthquakes in U.S. history all occurred in one state: Alaska. Greatest of all was the March 27, 1964, quake at Prince William Sound, which registered a staggering 9.2 on the Richter scale and took 125 lives. Of that number, 110 were killed in a tsunami resulting from the quake.

The high incidence of earthquakes in Alaska is understandable enough, given the fact that its southern edge abuts a subduction zone and, along with the panhandle, sits astride the boundary between the North American and Pacific plates. Although this may not be much comfort to people in Alaska, it is fortunate that the most earthquake-prone state is also the most sparsely populated. Had the epicenter (the point on Earth's surface directly above the hypocenter, or focal point from which a quake originates) of the 1964 earthquake been in New York City, the death toll would have been closer to 125,000 than 125.

Greatest Quakes in the Continental United States

Similarly, it is fortunate that the greatest quakes to strike the continental United States outside California have been in low-population centers. Of the 15 worst earthquakes in U.S. history, only one was outside Alaska, California, or Hawaii. In fact, it was the site of both the worst and the fifth-worst earthquakes in the continental United States: New Madrid, Missouri, site of a 7.9 quake on February 7, 1812, and a 7.7 quake just two months earlier, on December 16, 1811.

New Madrid lies at the extreme southeastern tip of Missouri, near the Mississippi River and within a few hundred miles of several major cities: St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee; and Louisville, Kentucky. Had the 1811 and 1812 quakes occurred today, they undoubtedly would have taken a vast human toll owing to the resulting floods. As it was, some lakes rose by as much as 15 ft. (4.6 m), streams changed direction, and the Mississippi and Ohio rivers flowed backward. Fortunately, however, they occurred at a time when the Missouri Territory—it was not even a state yet—and surrounding areas were sparsely populated. The combined death toll was in the single digits.

Of the top 15 earthquakes in the continental United States, all but the 1906 San Francisco quake (which ranks sixth) took place in areas with small populations. Ten were in California but generally in less populous areas or at times when there were fewer people there (e.g., no. 2: Fort Tejon, 1857; no. 3: Owens Valley, 1872; and no. 4: Imperial Valley, 1892). Other than the two New Madrid quakes, the remainder took place in Nevada (no. 12: Dixie Valley, 1954), Montana (no. 13: Hebgen Lake, 1959), and Idaho (no. 14: Borah Peak, 1983). As of late 2001, the Idaho quake was the second most recent, after no. 9, at Landers, California, in 1992. (The 1994 Northridge quake, in the Los Angeles area, ranked 6.7 on the Richter scale, well below the 7.3 registered by no. 15, west of Eureka, California, in 1922.)

The World's Most Destructive Quakes

None of these U.S. quakes, however, compares with the July 27, 1976, earthquake in T'ang-shan, China. The worst earthquake in modern history, it shattered some 20 sq. mi. (32 km sq.) near the capital city of Beijing and killed about 242,000 people while injuring an estimated 600,000 more. There are several interesting aspects to this quake, aside from its sheer scale.

One is sociological, involving the human response to the quake. As in Portugal in 1755, people saw events in a cosmic light; in this case, though, they did not interpret the quake as evidence of divine unconcern but quite the opposite. Mao Tse-tung (1893-1976), by far the most influential Chinese leader of modern times, had just died, and the Chinese saw the natural disaster as fitting into a larger historical pattern. In the traditional Chinese view, earthquakes, floods, and other signs from the gods attend the change of dynasties.

Also interesting is the fact that the T'angshan quake was merely the most destructive in a worldwide series of quakes that took place between February and November 1976. In the course of these events, 23,000 people died in Guatemala after a February 4 quake; 3,000 people were reported dead, and 3,000 more were missing in Indonesia, as a result of a series of quakes and landslides on June 26 (later, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, placed the number of dead from the Indonesia quake at just 443); as many as 8,000 people died in an earthquake and tsunami that hit the southern Philippines on August 16; and 4,000 more perished in a November 24 quake in eastern Turkey.

Similarly, a few months before the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, a quake hit northern Iran. This is an aspect of seismology that cannot be explained readily by plate tectonics: Iran and Portugal are not on the same plate margins; in fact, northern Iran is not on a plate margin at all. Likewise, the areas hit in the 1976 quakes were not on the same plate margins, and T'ang-shan (unlike the other places affected) is not on a major plate margin at all. Nor is Shansi in north-central China, site of history's most destructive earthquake on January 24, 1556, which killed more than 830,000 people.

Note that the 1556 and 1976 Chinese quakes were the worst, respectively, of all history and of modern times—but worst in terms of intensity, not magnitude. One might say that they were the most destructive but not the worst in pure terms. The 1976 quake is not even on the list of the 10 worst earthquakes—those of the greatest magnitude—in the twentieth century. Whereas the T'ang-shan quake registered 8.0, a quake in Chile on May 22, 1960, had a magnitude of 9.5, or about 50 times greater, yet the death toll was much smaller—2,000 people killed. Three thousand more were injured in the Chilean quake, and two million were rendered homeless. The last statistic perhaps best signifies the magnitude of the 1960 quake, which caused tsunamis that brought death and destruction as far away as Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, and the west coast of the United States.

Learning from Seismology

As noted, plate tectonics does not explain every earthquake, but it does explain most, probably about 90%. Not that it is much help in predicting earthquakes, because the processes of plate tectonics take place on an entirely different time scale than the ones to which humans are accustomed. These processes happen over millions of years, so it is hard to say, for any particular year, just what will happen to a particular plate.

Plate tectonics, then, tells us only areas of likelihood for earthquakes—specifically, plate boundaries of the types discussed near the end of Plate Tectonics. And even though the processes that create the conditions for an earthquake are extremely slow, usually the discernible indications that an earthquake is coming appear only seconds before the quake itself. Thus, as sophisticated as modern seismometers are, they generally do not provide enough advance notice of earthquakes to offer any lifesaving value.

There are not just a few earthquakes each year but many thousands of tremors, most of them too small to register. Sometimes these tremors may be foreshocks, or indicators that a quake is coming to a particular area. In addition, studies of other phenomena, from tidal behavior to that of animals (probably a result of some creatures' extremely acute hearing), may offer suggestions as to the locations of future quakes.

Earth's Core and the Moho

Seismology is useful for learning about more than just earthquakes or volcanoes. During the early years of the twentieth century, the Irish geologist Richard Dixon Oldham (1858-1936) studied data from a number of recent earthquakes and noticed a difference in the behavior of compression waves and shear waves. (These terms merely express the differences in stress produced by seismic waves.) As it turns out, shear waves are deflected as they pass through the center of Earth. Since liquid cannot experience shear, this finding told him that the planet's core must be made of molten material.

Oldham's findings, published in 1906—the same year as the great San Francisco quake—made him a pioneer in the application of seismology to the study of Earth's interior. Three years later, studies of earthquake waves by the Croatian geologist Andrija Mohorovicic (1857-1936) revealed still more about the interior of the planet. Based on his analysis of wave speeds and arrival times, Mohorovicic was able to calculate the depth at which the crust becomes the mantle. This change is abrupt rather than gradual, and the boundary on which it occurs is today known as the Mohorovicic discontinuity, or simply the Moho.

Where to Learn More

Abbott, Patrick. Natural Disasters. Dubuque, IA: WilliamC. Brown Publishers, 1996.

National Earthquake Information Center—World Data Center for Seismology, Denver (Web site). <http://neic.usgs.gov/>.

Prager, Ellen J., Kate Hutton, Costas Synolakis, et al. Furious Earth: The Science and Nature of Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Tsunamis. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000.

Seismology Info Page—Netherlands (Web site). <http://home.wish.net/~riknl/>.

Seismology Research Centre—Australia (Web site). <http://www.seis.com.au/>.

Sigurdsson, Haraldur. Encyclopedia of Volcanoes. San Diego: Academic Press, 2000.

Sleh, Keery E., and Simon LeVay. The Earth in Turmoil: Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Their Impact on Humankind. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1998.

University of Alaska Fairbanks Seismology (Web site). <http://www.aeic.alaska.edu/>.

University of Washington Seismology and Earthquake Information (Web site). <http://www.geophys.washington.edu/SEIS/>.

"Earthquake Hazards Program," USGS (United States Geological Survey) (Web site). <http://earthquake.usgs.gov/>.

Wade, Nicholas. The Science Times Book of Natural Disasters. New York: Lyons Press, 2000.

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The study of the shaking of the Earth's interior caused by natural or artificial sources. Throughout the period in which plate tectonics was advanced and its basic tenets tested and confirmed in the early 1960s, and into the latest phase of inquiry into basic processes, seismology (and particularly seismic imaging) has provided critical observational evidence upon which discoveries have been made and theory has been advanced regarding the structure of the Earth's crust, mantle, and core. See also Plate tectonics.

Theoretical seismology

A seismic source is an energy conversion process that over a short time (generally less than a minute and usually less than 1–10 s) transforms stored potential energy into elastic kinetic energy. This energy then propagates in the form of seismic waves through the Earth until it is converted into heat by internal (molecular) friction. Large sources, that is, sources that release large amounts of potential energy, can be detected worldwide. Earthquakes above Richter magnitude 5 and explosions above 50 kilotons or so are large enough to be observed globally before the seismic waves dissipate below modern levels of detection. Small charges of dynamite or small earthquakes are detectable at a distance of a few tens to a few hundreds of kilometers, depending on the type of rock between the explosion and the detector. See also Earthquake.

Seismic vibrations are recorded by instruments known as seismometers that sense the change in the position of the ground (or water pressure) as seismic waves pass underneath. The record of ground motion as a function of time is a seismogram, which may be in either analog or digital form. Advances in computer technology have made analog recording virtually obsolete: most seismograms are recorded digitally, which makes quantitative analysis much more feasible.

The response of the Earth to a seismic disturbance can be approximated by the equation of motion for a disturbance in a perfectly elastic body. This equation holds regardless of the type of source, and is closely related to the acoustic-wave equation governing the propagation of sound in a fluid. The equation of motion for an isotropic perfectly elastic solid separates into two equations describing the propagation of purely dilatational (volume changing, curl-free) and purely rotational (no volume changing, divergence-free) disturbances. These propagate with wave speeds α and β, respectively. These velocities are also known as the compressional or primary (P) and shear or secondary (S) velocities, and the corresponding waves are called P and S waves. The compressional velocity is always faster than the shear velocity. In the Earth, α can range from a few hundred meters per second in unconsolidated sediments to more than 13.7 km/s (8.2 mi/s) just above the core–mantle boundary. Wave speed β ranges from zero in fluids (ocean, fluid outer core) to about 7.3 km/s (4.4 mi/s) at the core-mantle boundary. See also Hooke's law; Special functions.

A P wave has no curl and thus only causes the material to undergo a volume change with no other distortion. An S wave has no divergence, thus causing no volume change, but right angles embedded in the material are distorted. Explosions are relatively efficient generators of compressional disturbances, but earthquakes generate both compressional and shear waves. Compressional waves, by virtue of the mechanical stability condition, always arrive before shear waves.

Compressional and shear waves can exist in an elastic body irrespective of its boundaries. For this reason, seismic waves traveling with speed α or β are known as body waves. A third type of wave motion is produced if the elastic material is bounded by a free surface. The free-surface boundary conditions help trap energy near the surface, resulting in a boundary or surface wave. This in turn can be of two types. A Rayleigh wave combines both compressional and shear motion and requires only the presence of a boundary to exist. A Love wave is a pure-shear disturbance that can propagate only in the presence of a change in the elastic properties with depth from the free surface. Both are slower than body waves.

Solutions of the elastic-wave equation in which a wave function of a particular shape propagates with a particular speed are known as traveling waves. An important property of traveling waves is their causality; that is, the wave function has no amplitude before the first predicted arrival of energy. The complete seismic wavefield can be constructed by summing up every possible traveling wave.

Traveling-wave or full-wave theory provides the basis for a very useful theoretical abstraction of elastic-wave propagation in terms of the more common notions of wavefronts and their outwardly directed normals, called rays. Ray theory makes the prediction of certain kinematic quantities such as ray path, travel time, and distance by a simple geometric exercise. Ray theory can be developed in the context of an Earth comprising flat-lying layers of uniform velocities; this is a very useful approximation for most problems in crustal seismology and can be extended to spherical geometry for global studies.

Kinematic equations have been developed to describe what happens to rays as they impinge on the boundaries between layers. The illustration shows a single ray propagating in the stack of horizontal layers that define the model Earth. At each interface, part of the ray's energy is reflected, but a portion also passes through into the layer below. The transmitted portion of the ray is refracted; that is, it changes the angle at which it is propagating. The relationship between the incident angle and the refracted angle is exactly the same as that describing the refraction of light between two media of differing refractive index. See also Refraction of waves.

Seismic ray paths. (a) A single ray passing through a multilayered Earth comprising a stack of uniform velocity layers will be reflected from each layer and also be refracted as it passes from one layer into the layer below in a manner that obeys Snell's law. Each ray therefore is considered to give rise to a new system of rays. (b) Ray diagram for a cross section of the spherical Earth. At the point labeled v(r), r = radial distance and v = velocity. r₀ = radial distance to the turning point. α is the angle of incidence.

These simple geometric equations can be extended to the computation of amplitudes provided that there are no sharp discontinuities in the velocity as a function of depth. More exact representations of the amplitudes and wave shapes that solve the full-wave equation to varying extents can be constructed with the aid of powerful computers; these methods are collectively known as seismogram synthesis, and the seismograms thus computed are known as synthetics. Synthetics can be computed for elastic or dissipative media that vary in one, two, or three dimensions.

In a typical experiment for crustal imaging, a source of seismic energy is discharged on the surface, and instruments record the disturbance at numerous locations. Many different types of sources have been devised, from simple explosives to mechanical vibrators and devices known as airguns that discharge a “shot” of compressed air. The details of the source-receiver geometry vary with the type of experiment and its objective, but the work always involves collecting a large number of recordings at increasing distance from the source. This seismogram is complex, exhibiting a number of distinct arrivals with a variety of shapes and having amplitudes that change with distance. Although this seismogram clearly does not resemble the structure of the Earth in any sensible way and is therefore not what would normally be thought of as an image, it can be analyzed to recover estimates of those physical properties of the Earth that govern seismic-wave propagation.

Two- and three-dimensional imaging

A volume of the crust can be directly imaged by seismic tomography. In crustal tomography, active sources are used (explosives on land, airguns at sea) so that the source location and shape are already known. Experiments can be constructed in which sources and receivers are distributed in such a way that many rays pass through a particular volume and the tomographic inversion can produce relatively high-resolution images of velocity pertubations in the crust. Crustal tomography uses transmitted rays like those that pass from a surface source through the crust to receivers that are also on the same surface. See also Geophysical exploration; Group velocity; Phase velocity; Seismic exploration for oil and gas; Wave equation.

Seismic source imaging

Another imaging problem in global seismology is constructing models of the seismic source. So-called first-motion representations of seismic sources (earthquakes) are the result of measurements made on the very first P waves or S waves arriving at an instrument; therefore they represent the very beginning of the rupture on the fault plane. This is not a problem if the rupture is approximately a point source, but this is true in practice only if the earthquake is quite small or exceptionally simple. An alternative is to examine only longer-period seismic phases, including surface waves, to obtain an estimate of the average point source that smooths over the space and time complexities of a large rupture. This so-called centroid-moment-tensor representation is routinely computed for events with magnitudes greater than about 5.5. Because an estimate for a centroid moment tensor is derived from much more of the seismogram than the first arrivals, it gives a better estimate of the energy content of the earthquake. This estimate, known as the seismic moment, represents the total stress reduction resulting from the earthquake; it is the basis for a new magnitude number M_W. This value is equivalent to the Richter body wave (m_b) or surface-wave magnitude (M_S) at low magnitudes, but it is much more accurate for magnitudes above about 7.5.

Some large events comprise smaller subevents distributed in space and time and contributing to the total rupture and seismic moment. The position and individual rupture characteristics of these subevents can be mapped with remarkable precision, given data of exceptional bandwidth and good geographical distribution. An outstanding problem is whether the location of these subevents is related to stress heterogeneities within the fault zone. These stress heterogeneities are known as barriers or asperities, depending on whether they stop or initiate rupture. See also Seismographic instrumentation.

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For more information on seismology, visit Britannica.com.

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(seyez-mol-uh-jee)

The branch of science devoted to the study of seismic waves and the information they provide about the structure of the interior of the Earth.

Our knowledge of the properties of the crust, the mantle, and the core comes from this field.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - seismologi

Nederlands (Dutch)
seismologie

Français (French)
n. - sismologie

Deutsch (German)
n. - Seismologie, Erdbebenkunde

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (γεωλ.) σεισμολογία

Italiano (Italian)
sismologia

Português (Portuguese)
n. - sismologia (f)

Русский (Russian)
сейсмология

Español (Spanish)
n. - sismología

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - seismologi

中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
地震学

中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 地震學

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 지진학

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 地震学

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) علم ألزلازل‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮מדע רעידות האדמה, סיסמולוגיה‬

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