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Seismology is the study of stress and changes in stress within the Earth and other planetary bodies, particularly earthquakes caused by slip and rupture along faults and by magmatic activity. The field is also concerned with earthquake risks and hazards, as well as the propagation of elastic waves through the surface of the Earth.
This study provides seismic evidence for the presence of partial melts along the base of Cascadia’s subducting slab, with implications to lithosphere-asthenosphere decoupling that potentially influences subduction dynamics and earthquake cycles.
Using observations of double-difference relocated earthquakes in a local three-dimensional velocity model for Ecuador, a detailed image of seismicity is created, forming the base for more realistic models of earthquake rupture, slip and hazard in subduction zones.
A 2000 year-long sedimentary record of tsunami deposits along the Mexican subduction zone provides a proxy for earthquake occurrence and suggests a large event of magnitude 8 or greater occurred in the Guerrero seismic gap around AD 1300.
A 3D stochastic declustering algorithm, applied to data from the dense seismic array at the Alto Tiberina Fault system, Italy, suggests the difference between earthquake size distributions of independent and triggered seismicity is not an artifact.
Recent sequences of reverse-faulting earthquakes at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Carlsberg Ridge show that tectonic extension at mid-ocean ridge axes can be partially undone by tectonic shortening across the ridge flanks.
Nature Geoscience spoke with Samantha Hansen, a geophysicist at the University of Alabama and Sebastian Rost, a global seismologist at the University of Leeds about the ultralow velocity zones in the lowermost mantle.
Advances in seismological observational and modelling techniques are needed to constrain complex lowermost mantle structures and understand their influence on the global dynamics and evolution of Earth’s interior.
Astrophysicist Avi Loeb says that an interstellar meteor showered Earth with particles. At a planetary-science conference this week, researchers begged to differ.
Through the detection of postcursors of shear waves diffracted at the core–mantle boundary, a zone of ultralow seismic velocities has been identified at the base of the mantle beneath the Himalayas. The presence of this zone is probably linked to a subducted slab remnant that is driving mantle flow in the region.