Peter M. Shearer - Introduction to Seismology

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Since the first edition of Introduction to Seismology appeared in 1999, there have been many advances in the field, and a number of other seismology texts have been published. However, there remains a need for a readable, concise introduction to the quantitative aspects of seismology that is designed specifically for classroom instruction, and I hope my book continues to fill this niche.

Over the last 10 years, I have continued teaching the beginning seismology class at University of California, San Diego and have received feedback from my students, as well as other instructors who have been using the book. The third edition is my attempt to expand on some subjects, clarify parts of the book that have proven confusing, and update the discussion of current research results. Major changes and additions from the second edition include the following:

• section describing waveform cross-correlation of ambient noise
• expanded discussion of seismic migration, including its relation to back-projection and adjoint inversion
• reworked and expanded anisotropy section, including shear-wave splitting analysis methods
• updates to the source chapter, including greater discussion of directivity and fault weakening mechanisms
• more worked examples throughout the text
• computer code examples now in Python rather than Fortran

To quicken the pace, many results are described without detailed proofs or derivations of equations. In these cases, the reader is usually referred to other sources for more complete explanations. Generally, I have attempted to provide practical descriptions of the main concepts and how they are used to study Earth structure. Some knowledge of physics and vector calculus is assumed, but in an effort to make the book self-contained, most of the key concepts are reviewed in the appendices. Although some current research results are presented, I have concentrated more on fundamental principles and key data sets in an effort to avoid rapid obsolescence after this book goes to press.

The emphasis in the student exercises is not on deriving equations (which few seismologists spend much time doing anyway) but on using techniques explained in the text to compute results of interest and to illustrate some of Earths seismic properties. Since computer programming skills are often a necessity for performing seismology research, I have included a number of computer-based assignments. These are designed to give a taste of real research problems, while requiring only .