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Earthquake, Location Techniques

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Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics

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

Synonyms

Hypocenter determination

Definition

Earthquake location. Methods for determining the latitude, longitude, depth, and time of origin of a seismic event (earthquake, explosion, etc.) using the arrival times of seismic waves.

Introduction

Knowing the location of an earthquake (its latitude, longitude, depth, and origin time) is an essential starting point for the vast majority of quantitative seismological analyses. In the context of this article, earthquake location will be taken to mean determining the initiation point of fault rupture, that is, the hypocenter. After briefly tracing some of the early history of methods for the quantitative determination of earthquake locations, the focus of discussion turns to modern methods for single-event location and uncertainty estimation. The final section covers multiple-event location, with an emphasis on the substantial to – in some cases – profound improvement in relative location accuracy that can be achieved by combining waveform...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geoscience, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1215 W. Dayton St., 53706-1672, Madison, WI, USA

    Clifford H. Thurber

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  1. Clifford H. Thurber
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Correspondence to Clifford H. Thurber .

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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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Thurber, C.H. (2011). Earthquake, Location Techniques. 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_25

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