Mount Vesuvius has been famous ever since its eruption in 79 CE, when it destroyed and buried the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. But less well-known is the role it played in the science and culture of early modern Italy, as Sean Cocco reveals in this ambitious and wide-ranging study. Humanists began to make pilgrimages to Vesuvius during the early Renaissance to experience its beauty and study its history, but a new tradition of observation emerged in 1631 with the first great eruption of the modern period. Seeking to understand the volcano's place in the larger system of nature, Neapolitans flocked to Vesuvius to examine volcanic phenomena and to collect floral and mineral specimens from the mountainside. In "Watching Vesuvius", Cocco argues that this investigation and engagement with Vesuvius was paramount to the development of modern volcanology. He then situates the native experience of Vesuvius in a larger intellectual, cultural, and political context and explains how later eighteenth-century representations of Naples - of its climate and character - grew out of this tradition of natural history. Painting a rich and detailed portrait of Vesuvius and those living in its shadow, Cocco returns the historic volcano to its place in a broader European culture of science, travel, and appreciation of the natural world.

Japan, which is among the most earthquake-prone regions in the world, has a long history of responding to seismic disasters. However, despite advances in earthquake-related safety technologies, the destructiveness of the magnitude 9 class earthquake and tsunami that struck the country on 3/11 raised profound questions about how societies can deal effectively with seismic hazards. This important book places the devastating earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown disaster in historical perspective, examining conceptions of earthquakes since the seventeenth century, the diverse ways actual earthquakes and their aftermath played out, and their enduring social and scientific significance. By looking backward, Gregory Smits identifies future pitfalls to avoid and assesses the allocation of resources for dealing with future earthquake and tsunami disasters. He criticizes Japan's postwar quest for earthquake prediction and the concept of "characteristic" earthquakes. Smits argues that earthquakes are so chaotic as to be unpredictable, not only geologically but also in their social and cultural effects. Therefore, he contends, the best hope for future disaster mitigation is antiseismic engineering and flexible disaster-relief capabilities. As the first sustained historical analysis of destructive earthquakes and tsunamis, this book is an essential resource for anyone interested in Japan, natural disasters, seismology, and environmental history.

Volcanoes around the world have their own legends, and many have wrought terrible devastation, but none has caught the imagination like Vesuvius. We now know that immense eruptions destroyed Bronze Age settlements around Vesuvius, but the Romans knew nothing of those disasters and were lulled into complacency-much as we are today-by its long period of inactivity. None of the nearly thirty eruptions since AD 79 has matched the infamous cataclysm that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum within hours. Nearly two thousand years later, the allure of the volcano remains-as evidenced by its popularity as a tourist attraction, from Shelley and the Romantics to modern-day visitors. Vesuvius has loomed large throughout history, both feared and celebrated. Gillian Darley unveils the human responses to Vesuvius from a cast of characters as far-flung as Pliny the Younger and Andy Warhol, revealing shifts over time. This cultural and scientific meditation on a powerful natural wonder touches on pagan religious beliefs, vulcanology, and travel writing. Sifting through the ashes of Vesuvius, Darley exposes how changes in our relationship to the volcano mirror changes in our understanding of our cultural and natural environments.

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Geophysical Monograph Series, Volume 143.

For thousands of years man has marvelled at the gigantic structure that makes up Mt. Etna, the largest active volcano in Europe, and has lived side by side with the mountain, which despite its intense eruptive activity has always been considered a "friendly giant."After the Second World War, with its frequent but non life-threatening eruptions, Mt. Etna represented an ideal location for volcanological research for the national and international scientific community. Numerous scientists from Belgium, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America have taken part in volcanological research aimed at understanding the volcano.

Among all the numerical methods in seismology, the finite-difference (FD) technique provides the best balance of accuracy and computational efficiency. This book offers a comprehensive introduction to FD and its applications to earthquake motion. Using a systematic tutorial approach, the book requires only undergraduate degree-level mathematics and provides a user-friendly explanation of the relevant theory. It explains FD schemes for solving wave equations and elastodynamic equations of motion in heterogeneous media, and provides an introduction to the rheology of viscoelastic and elastoplastic media. It also presents an advanced FD time-domain method for efficient numerical simulations of earthquake ground motion in realistic complex models of local surface sedimentary structures. Accompanied by a suite of online resources to help put the theory into practice, this is a vital resource for professionals and academic researchers using numerical seismological techniques, and graduate students in earthquake seismology, computational and numerical modelling, and applied mathematics.

The Seismic Analysis Code (SAC) is one of the most widely used analysis packages for regional and teleseismic seismic data. For the first time, this book provides users at introductory and advanced levels with a complete guide to SAC. It leads new users of SAC through the steps of learning basic commands, describes the SAC processing philosophy, and presents its macro language in full, supported throughout with example inputs and outputs from SAC. For more experienced practitioners, the book describes SAC's many hidden features, including advanced graphics aspects, its file structure, how to write independent programs to access and create files, and much more. Tutorial exercises engage users with newly acquired skills, providing data and code to implement the standard methods of teleseismic shear-wave splitting and receiver function analysis. Methodical and authoritative, this is a key resource for researchers and graduate students in global seismology, earthquake seismology and geophysics.

Earthquakes have taught us much about our planet's hidden structure and the forces that have shaped it. This knowledge rests not only on the recordings of seismographs, but also on the observations of eyewitnesses to destruction. During the nineteenth century, a scientific description of an earthquake was built of stories - stories from as many people in as many situations as possible. Sometimes their stories told of fear and devastation, sometimes of wonder and excitement. In "The Earthquake Observers", Deborah R. Coen acquaints readers not only with the century's most eloquent seismic commentators, including Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Karl Kraus, Ernst Mach, John Muir, and William James, but also with countless other citizen-observers, many of whom were women. Coen explains how observing networks transformed an instant of panic and confusion into a field for scientific research, turning earthquakes into natural experiments at the nexus of the physical and human sciences. Seismology abandoned this project of citizen science with the introduction of the Richter Scale in the 1930s, only to revive it in the twenty-first century in the face of new hazards and uncertainties. "The Earthquake Observers" tells the history of this interrupted dialogue between scientists and citizens about living with environmental risk.

Volcanoes are essential elements in the delicate global balance of elemental forces that govern both the dynamic evolution of the Earth and the nature of Life itself. Without volcanic activity, life as we know it would not exist on our planet. Although beautiful to behold, volcanoes are also potentially destructive, and understanding their nature is critical to prevent major loss of life in the future.

Richly illustrated with over 300 original color photographs and diagrams the book is written in an informal manner, with minimum use of jargon, and relies heavily on first-person, eye-witness accounts of eruptive activity at both "red" (effusive) and "grey" (explosive) volcanoes to illustrate the full spectrum of volcanic processes and their products. Decades of teaching in university classrooms and fieldwork on active volcanoes throughout the world have provided the authors with unique experiences that they have distilled into a highly readable textbook of lasting value. Questions for Thought, Study, and Discussion, Suggestions for Further Reading, and a comprehensive list of source references make this work a major resource for further study of volcanology.

Volcanoes maintains three core foci: Global perspectives explain volcanoes in terms of their tectonic positions on Earth and their roles in earth historyEnvironmental perspectives describe the essential role of volcanism in the moderation of terrestrial climate and atmosphereHumanitarian perspectives discuss the major influences of volcanoes on human societies. This latter is especially important as resource scarcities and environmental issues loom over our world, and as increasing numbers of people are threatened by volcanic hazards

Readership

Volcanologists, advanced undergraduate, and graduate students in earth science and related degree courses, and volcano enthusiasts worldwide.

A companion website is also available for this title at www.wiley.com/go/lockwood/volcanoes

Close to 75 million people in 39 states face some risk from earthquakes. Seismic hazards are greatest in the western United States, particularly California, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii. The Rocky Mountain region, a portion of the central United States known as the New Madrid Seismic Zone, and portions of the eastern seaboard, particularly South Carolina, also have a relatively high earthquake hazard. Compared to the loss of life in other countries, relatively few Americans have died as a result of earthquakes over the past 100 years. The United States, however, faces the possibility of large economic losses from earthquake damaged buildings and infrastructure.

This book provides an approachable and concise introduction to seismic theory, designed as a first course for undergraduate students. It clearly explains the fundamental concepts, emphasizing intuitive understanding over lengthy derivations. Incorporating over 30% new material, this second edition includes all the topics needed for a one-semester course in seismology. Additional material has been added throughout including numerical methods, 3-D ray tracing, earthquake location, attenuation, normal modes, and receiver functions. The chapter on earthquakes and source theory has been extensively revised and enlarged, and now includes details on non-double-couple sources, earthquake scaling, radiated energy, and finite slip inversions. Each chapter includes worked problems and detailed exercises that give students the opportunity to apply the techniques they have learned to compute results of interest and to illustrate the Earth's seismic properties. Computer subroutines and datasets for use in the exercises are available at www.cambridge.org/shearer.

The major theme of this book is scientific evaluation of different categories of unusual phenomena i.e. precursors prior to large earthquakes and the explanation of their occurrence using electromagnetic models. In addition focus has been targeted to consider various scientific methods in the arena of interdisciplinary fields mainly on the short term forecasting of the large earthquakes, which is making a remarkable progress in recent years. The book presents an integrated approach to the concept of earthquake prediction as a whole, based on studies of precursors related to the living things, underground, land and atmosphere. The book will play an important role in the understanding and developing new and effective systems for earthquake prediction, based on multidisciplinary approach, which will ultimately help in reducing the earthquake related loss of lives and property.

"This is the most complete reference available on Texas earthquakes.... Its general information on earthquakes, presented in a humorous and understandable manner, will even make the text attractive to non-Texans who want to know more about earthquakes." -- Diane I. Doser, Professor of Geology, University of Texas at El Paso

When nature goes haywire in Texas, it isn't usually an earthshaking event. Though droughts, floods, tornadoes, and hail all keep Texans talking about the unpredictable weather, when it comes to earthquakes, most of us think we're on terra firma in this state. But we're wrong! Nearly every year, earthquakes large enough to be felt by the public occur somewhere in Texas.

This entertaining, yet authoritative book covers "all you really need to know" about earthquakes in general and in Texas specifically. The authors explain how earthquakes are caused by natural forces or human activities, how they're measured, how they can be predicted, and how citizens and governments should prepare for them. They also thoroughly discuss earthquakes in Texas, looking at the occurrences and assessing the risks region by region and comparing the amount of seismic activity in Texas to other parts of the country and the world. The book concludes with a compendium of over one hundred recorded earthquakes in Texas from 1811 to 2000 that briefly describes the location, timing, and effects of each event.

The Story of Earthquakes and Volcanoes

"An excellent survey of earthquakes and their effects--their mystery, terror, and science, and how we are learning to control their forces."--Christopher Arnold, president, Building Systems Development

We expect everything to move except the earth! Anyone who has ever experienced an earthquake or seen news footage of cracking buildings and swaying bridges can appreciate the awe and fear that moving earth can inspire. This book unravels the mystery and the marvel of one of natures most unpredictable and terrifying phenomena: the earthquake.

With a lively text and over 100 illustrations, two of the worlds premier structural engineers take us on a fascinating trip from the Earths beginnings to recent developments in seismic technology. It is one told through the stories of the worst natural disasters of all time: Lisbon, San Francisco, Alaska, Vesuvius, Krakatau, Mount St. Helens. These earthshaking events form the background for an exploration of the nature of earthquakes and volcanoes, the prediction of their behavior, and an up-to-date description of the measures we can take to protect ourselves from their destructive nature.

Matthys Levy, an architectural engineer, has won numerous awards, including the AIA Institute Honor Award. Mario Salvadori is James Renwick Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering and Professor Emeritus of Architecture at Columbia University. Both authors are principals of Weidlinger Associates, one of Americas leading structural engineering firms, and live in New York City.

This book aims to give an overview on the present state of volcanic lake research, covering topics such as volcano monitoring, the chemistry, dynamics and degassing of acidic crater lakes, mass-energy-chemical-isotopic balance approaches, limnology and degassing of Nyos-type lakes, the impact on the human and natural environment, the eruption products and impact of crater lake breaching eruptions, numerical modeling of gas clouds and lake eruptions, thermo-hydro-mechanical and deformation modeling, CO2 fluxes from lakes, volcanic lakes observed from space, biological activity, continuous monitoring techniques, and some aspects more. We hope to offer an updated manual on volcanic lake research, providing classic research methods, and point towards a more high-tech approach of future volcanic lake research and continuous monitoring.

The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 is considered to have been one of the worst natural disasters in history, affecting twelve countries, from Indonesia to Somalia. 175,000 people are believed to have lost their lives, almost 50,000 were registered as missing and 1.7 million people were displaced. As well as this horrendous toll on human life, the tsunami destroyed property worth billions of dollars and ruined many local economies. Based on their experience and analysis of this tsunami, the authors have developed methodologies for predicting and preparing for tsunamis. A basis is provided for a cost-effective warning and preparedness strategy, drawing on the example of existing systems used in earthquake disaster management and tidal wave warning, from genesis to impact. The book comprehensively addresses the fundamentals of tsunami science, identifying potential areas where tsunamis might be generated, predicting the anticipated course of tsunamis and considering how the geophysical, ecological and socioeconomic location of a community may determine the severity of tsunami damage. The authors suggest how precursors can be used to enhance the advance warning time, how tsunamis can be detected at the time of their occurrence, and the manner in which warnings should be communicated to the populations likely to be affected. Finally, improvement in eco-sociological resilience through the application of dual-use technologies is identified as a pivotal aid in allowing coastal communities to be better prepared. The book will be of interest to a global audience of professionals and academics active in seismology, ocean science, meteorology, coastal management, earthquake engineering and disaster management.

Earthquake Prediction is the ultimate goal for geoscientists. This volume presents the latest ideas of the ever fascinating and challenging research of earthquake prediction. Sunspot activity and Coronal mass ejection are considered to be influential phenomena in affecting both the electric as well as the magnetic characteristics of sun-earth environment. All these changes have been observed before the occurrence of earthquakes and tsunami in various parts of the earth. A session on Earthquake Prediction, chaired by Dr. Saumitra Mukerjee was held during the European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2005, (Vienna, Austria, April 2005). The EGU General Assembly was able to bring together 8000 geoscientists from all over Europe and the rest of the world into one meeting covering all disciplines of the Earth and Planetary Sciences. This book presents the 7 papers presented in the session on Earthquake Prediction.

This book is a state-of-the-art report on the ductility of steel structures, containing a comprehensive review of the technical literature available, and presenting the results of the authors' own extensive research activities in this area. Analytical and numerical methods are described, and a wealth of practical information is provided. Ductility of Seismic-Resistant Steel Structures will be of great use to advanced students, researchers, designers and professionals in the field of civil, structural and earthquake engineering.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203477324

This study presents an account of electromagnetic phenomena in the earth's crust immediately preceding a tectonic earthquake. The results of experiments performed throughout the last 20 years using data collected from the satellite and ground-based observations are analyzed and form the basis of various conceptual explanations of seismo-electromagnetic phenomena. The authors also present their own theoretical model of the generation of electromagnetic emission in the earth's crust. The tendency for earthquake-prone areas to be used for modern urban and industrial development underlines the significance of this monograph. Its applications are extensive, including defrectoscopy, monitoring stress in mines, and the development of electromagnetic methods of earthquake prediction; and should interest geologists, geophysicists, and specialists in solid-state physics.

Focusing on fundamental concepts, definitions various aspects of siting, this book contains a detailed checklist to help readers conduct a proper siting process to assess the seismic hazards of a given site. The required site investigation techniques are described in detail.

This is a translation of "Fazovie Prevrazheniya i Petrogenez." Earthquakes, tectonic movements and magmatic activities are considered as different manifestations of the same physico-mechanical process. This text discusses characteristics of phase transformation thermodynamics and the origin of magmaic fomrations are discussed.

Principles; Migration in the space-time & frequency domain; Optimised & non-linear migration; Effect of velocity structure inhomogeneity; Pseudo-three-dimensional & three-dimensional migrations; Peculiarities of migration results & technology.