Methodology, results, and problems of forecasting earthquakes

Abstract

About one third of Russia's population lives in earthquake endangered regions and on territories where a large number of facilities are concentrated, and their destruction in case of an earthquake would lead to significant human and economic losses, as well as unfavorable environmental consequences. It has been established experimentally that a serious hazard is earthquakes with a magnitude over 6. Magnitude М characterizes in conventional units the earthquake energy released due to the rupture of rocks in the earth's interior. The strongest of the known earth quakes had a magnitude of ~9.5, and their rupture length reached several thousand kilometers.The spatial and temporal distribution of earth quakes of various magnitudes is characterized by the term seismicity. Seismic waves that reach the earth's surface cause tremors, which are measured in magni tudes J. Russia uses a 12 magnitude scale of seismic activity. At J of 6, cracks appear in buildings; J of 8 destroys civilian buildings; stronger tremors can lead to changes in the ground relief. It is anticipated that expensive antiseismic construction will not be able to ensure security in the near future. Therefore, more attention should be paid to earthquake forecasting. Earthquakes occur where plates and individual blocks of the earth's solid shell, the crust, move in dif ferent directions with speeds of about several centime ters a year. These discordant movements create elastic stress at plate contacts, and, as the rock strength is reached, the accumulated potential energy is released, causing an earthquake. Russia is situated on the rela tively slow moving Eurasian Plate. In the east, it bor ders the high speed plates under the Pacific Ocean, leading to earthquakes with an intensity of J 10. In the south, the accumulation of potential elastic energy is largely predetermined by the movement of plates located under the territories of India, China, and Tur key; this creates earthquakes with intensity up to 9 points. Thus, the most dangerous regions on Russian territory are Kamchatka, the Kuril Islands, Cisbaika lia, and the Northern Caucasus.The general seismic situation has remained stable for thousands of years. Knowledge of the historical seismicity, block structure, and crust faults helps to map seismic zoning. These maps do not determine the time of origin of individual future earthquakes but indicate the most probable tremors in points. The improvement of seismic zoning maps is an important task of seismology, because the tasks of forecasting the place, time, and magnitude of individual earthquakes are based on this information. The earthquake predict ability concept was proposed during work within sev eral RAS Presidium programs [1,2], including the stages of long term, medium term, and short term forecasting (Fig. 1).Long term forecasting (for 10-15 years) is based on observations over seismic activity. In Russia, this type of forecasting has passed the stage of quantitative development and practical tests for the Kuril-Kam chatka zone [3]. The notion...

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