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Earthquake Rupture: Inverse Problem

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Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

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In seismology, as in all geophysics, an area of major interest is inverse problems. That is, given the effect, one would like to determine the cause. The inverse problem of earthquake source mechanics consists of analyzing seismograms to obtain detailed information on the earthquake rupturing process. In particular, scientists are interested in how the slip develops over the fault area during the time period that the two sides of the fault are moving past one another, at what speed do these two sides slide past, what the resulting stress drop is, as well as the speed at which rupture itself spreads out over the fault. Such information is essential for reliable seismic hazard assessment.

The solution of this problem is far from trivial, because it is unstable (Kostrov and Das, 1988), and from the computational point of view, this instability manifests itself as non-uniqueness of the solution. Adding constraints to the solution of the relevant equations has been shown to stabilize the...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, OX1 3AN, Oxford, UK

    Shamita Das

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  1. Shamita Das
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Correspondence to Shamita Das .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Geophysical Research Institute, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Hyderabad, India

    Harsh K. Gupta

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Das, S. (2011). Earthquake Rupture: Inverse Problem. In: Gupta, H.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8702-7_142

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