TheBasicsofEarthquakeLocation课程.pptVIP

The Basics of Earthquake Location William Menke Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Columbia University The basic data in earthquake location is Arrival Time, t The time of day that a wave from the earthquake arrives at a seismograph station The distinction between Arrival Time: time of day something arrives And Travel Time: the length of time spent traveling Is very important in earthquake location! Arrival Time ≠Travel TimeQ: a car arrived in town after traveling for an half an hour at sixty miles an hour. Where did it start A. Thirty miles awayQ: a car arrived in town at half past one, traveling at sixty miles an hour. Where andwhen did it start A. Are you crazy An earthquake location has 4 Parameters x, y epicenter  z depth  t origin time Together, x, y, z are called the hypocenter. The fact that origin time is an unknown adds complexity to the earthquake location problem! Suppose you contour arrival timeon surface of earth Fundamental data:arrival time tpi of wavesfrom earthquake p to station i Fundamental RelationshipArrival Time Origin Time + Travel Timetpi tp + Tpi Locating an earthquakerequires knowing theearth’s seismic velocity structureaccuratelyso that traveltime can be calculatedbetween stations and hypothetical hypocenters examplevelocitystructure Iceland in this caseassumed to vary only with depth Basic Principle Best estimates of the hypocentral parameters and origin time are the ones that best predict the arrival times at all the stations. Usually, “best predicts” means minimizing the least-squares prediction error, E: Ep Si [ tpiobserved – tpipredicted ]2 where tpipredicted tppredicted + Tpipredicted and where Tpipredicted depends on xp, yp, zp The mathematical problem is to find the hypocentral parameters, xppredicted xp, yp, zp predicted and origin time, tppredicted that give the best fit which is to say, minimize the error But the problem is that the traveltime varies