A four-year study of shear-wave splitting in Iceland: 1. Background and preliminary analysis
Abstract
A four-year study of seismic shear-wave splitting in Iceland was designed to seek temporal variations before earthquakes. Shear-wave splitting is observed routinely in Iceland whenever shear-waves arrive within the shear-wave window of seismic stations, and whenever adequate data are available, temporal and spatial variations in shear-wave splitting are observed before both earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Shear-wave splitting is caused principally by the stress-aligned fluid-saturated microcracks and pore throats in almost all in situ rocks. Fluid-saturated microcracks are the most compliant elements of the rock mass, and changes in splitting can be directly interpreted and modelled as the effects of changing stress on the microcrack geometry in the rock mass often at considerable distances from the immediate earthquake source zone. Such changes were found and are reported in Part 2 of this study. This chapter presents the background, preliminary observations, and analysis of shear-wave splitting in Iceland.
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New Insights into Structural Interpretation and Modelling

This title has arisen from the Geological Society of London conference of the same name. Since the publication of the predecessor of this book (‘Modern insights into structural interpretation, validation and modelling’, SP99, 1996, edited by Buchanan & Nieuwland) much progress has been made. This has been primarily thanks to the continuously increasing computing speed and computer memory capacity, which has positively affected all fields in structural interpretation, seismics and modelling, directly or indirectly.
‘New insights in structural interpretation and modelling’, presents a balanced overview of what the title promises. It is intended as a book that will serve the experienced professional as well as more advanced students in earth sciences, with a broad selection of topics ranging from classical field based studies to state of the art analogue and numerical modeling. The leaders of their fields have written some of the chapters, whereas younger authors with a fresh outlook and new ideas have written other chapters.