Modern Global Seismology, Volume 58 (International Geophysics) (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Terry C. Wallace (Author) "The Earth is composed of silicate and iron-alloy materials with the remarkable property that, over the wide range of pressure and temperature conditions existing within..." (more)
Key Phrases: American Geophysical Union, Loma Prieta, San Andreas (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...has more real examples from current research topics and is thus superior in providing exposure to current data." -- Toshiro Tanimoto, Physics Today, 11/00

"...this is an important new book that will become a standard for introductory seismology courses taught by many universities. I am already using it this semester and am getting positive feedback from my students. I also would recommend it to a range of geophysicists who wanted to educate themselves further on the fundamentals of seismology."
--Gary L. Pavlis, Department of Geological Sciences, Indiana University -- Review

Review

"...this is an important new book that will become a standard for introductory seismology courses taught by many universities. I am already using it this semester and am getting positive feedback from my students. I also would recommend it to a range of geophysicists who wanted to educate themselves further on the fundamentals of seismology."
--Gary L. Pavlis, Department of Geological Sciences, Indiana University

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 521 pages
• Publisher: Academic Press (May 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 012732870X
• ISBN-13: 978-0127328706
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #529,551 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good (advanced) introdution to quantitative seismology, July 25, 1999

By A Customer

This book is not for the casual reader. It is written for first year graduate students. To really understand it, you need to know some advanced math,at leadt through differential equations. However, with that background, this is an excellent book. Much easier to read than Aki and Richards. I only wish the book was published when I was a first year graduate student.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A serious introduction to global seismology, January 29, 2002

By	"adbakar" (San Diego, California United States) - See all my reviews

The Lay & Wallace provides a good starting description of global seismology. Chapter 1 deals with the historical development and the topics of global seismology. Chapter 2 concerns elasticity and seismic waves. The concepts of strain and stress are introduced. The mathematical content is limited (all you have to know is the partial derivatives) and a lot of figures help you to understand. By the way, this book uses the same boxes as the Aki & Richards to focus on a particular point. The equation of motion and the wave equations are derived.
Chapter 3 deals with Body waves and ray theory.The eikonal equation is introduced,and the body of this chapter concerns travel time propagation, partitioning of energy at a boundary,wave attenuation and scattering in really simple terms. Once again, a lot of figures and documents help the understanding.
Chapter 4 focuses on surface waves and free oscillations and starts with free-surface interactions, Rayleigh and Love waves and their dispersion. Tsunamis are also considered, with only two equations but 6 figures and documents. The end of the chapter is devoted to free oscillations of the earth with once again a lot of documents.
Chapter 5 deals with seismometry, that is what are the instruments used in seismology. This chapter provides differents maps of global networks of seismometers. Chapter 6 considers seismogram interpretation (identification of seismic phases). This is applied to source location. The concept of inversion is introduced with no big deal of maths. The end of the chapter concerns then the generalized inverse and requires more maths. Chapter 7 concerns the determination of Earth structure, and appears in continuity with the previous chapter. No less than 56 figures plus documents are provided to help the understanding of the earth's structure. Seismic tomography is described in simple terms. Then each "layer" of the earth is characterized in terms of seismology.
Chapter 8 focuses on seismic sources, and introduces equivalent body forces, elastostatics, elastodynamics in a very simple way. The seismic moment tensor is introduced here.
Chapter 9 deals with earthquake cinematics and dynamics. It describes the classical 1D Haskell source, the source spetrum. The concepts of stress drop, particle velocity and rupture velocity are explicited. The end of the chapter is devoted to magnitude scales, seismic energy, aftershocks, and the scaling relations of earthquakes.
Chapter 10 tackles the problem of waveform modeling. Finally Chapter 11 deals with seismotectonics and provides plenty of interesting documents.

This book provides an excellent overview of global seismology. It should be extremely useful to teachers (valuable source of documents for your class) and also for those who want to start seismology. Additional reading will be necessary, eventually.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great text for a student's first seismology course, August 31, 1998

By A Customer

Lay and Wallace present the subject of seismology in a manner that is both simple and complete. The text is not filled with "techno-babble" that often discourages readers. Everything they do say is well-supported and is presented in such a manner that most students in the Earth Sciences can understand. This is the clearest and most thorough book available for teaching seismology. Most instructors have to photo copy portions of other texts to get the breadth of coverage this book offers in one volume.