Through difficulties to the earthquake prediction

Abstract

Relevance. The study of earthquakes is the most important task for ensuring the human life safety in urban areas. A reasonable prediction of strong earthquakes is of great scientific and practical interest. Aim. The article presents the results of the analysis of the situation in seismology in the light of the works of G.A. Gamburtsev, who was an outstanding Russian seismologist and geophysicist. Many of his very promising studies remained incomplete. He showed that the foci of earthquakes, occurring in the earth’s crust, originate, accumulate and collapse in the zones of tectonic seismogenic faults in the earth’s crust; he also showed that these processes can be monitored directly on the ground surface, studying the deformations of the earth’s crust. Unfortunately, the development of seismological science went in a different way. Methods. The article considers the history of the development of earthquake prediction methodology in stages. Results. The article shows that the prediction problem solution by solving inverse problems or by recognizing an image, according to the set of anomalies in various geophysical and other fields, did not prove its value in general. Reliable cause-andeffect relationships between processes in the earthquake focus and anomalies in various fields were not found. However, supporters of the “anomaly strategy” found another explanation for the research result: a cause-andeffect relationship takes place, but the anomalies generated by the earthquake source are very weak, and they can only be detected using sufficiently dense observational networks capable of capturing these anomalies. The idea of dense networks was implemented at the San Andreas Fault in California, but it was not confirmed. The solution of the earthquake prediction problem is possible only in case of the start of the research aimed at the detecting direct indications that an accumulation of elastic seismogenic deformations are taking place in this particular rock volume. It is necessary to begin the earthquake prediction by detecting the location of the generating focus. One forecast profile is enough to predict the location of the earthquake source. And for the prediction of an earthquake intensity, several profiles are necessary. The problem of the time of an earthquake forecast requires a comprehensive solution, since it is obligatory to study the laws of seismic source destruction with the help of geodetic, seismological and other methods.