Recent Progress on Earthquake Geology (Environmental Science, Engineering and Technology)

This book shows papers from researchers of different countries in the world, that point out the study of seismoinduced phenomena associated with recent and historical earthquakes and also an article about the April 6, 2009 devastating earthquake of L'Aquila in central Italy. Starting from the basical knowledge it is possible to reconstruct the geo-history of the phenomena induced by earthquakes and the own recurrence time. Earthquake geologists study the surface expression of earthquake like faults and ground failure caused by strong ground shaking. Moreover, ground deformation phenomena and other secondary effects such as tectonic subsidence and uplift, liquefaction, shaking-induced landslides, tsunamis and also the migration of hydrogen as protons, can be used to identify earthquakes. Finally, with Paleoseismology, a branch of Earthquake Geology, we can define timing, location and size of prehistoric earthquakes. The collected articles highlight the importance of the geology of the events, in other words all the information recorded in the stratigraphic levels. In fact, only through the reconstruction of the past history we can try to do forecasting for the future, otherwise we can make only prevention. In fact, the knowledge of when, where, how often, and with what magnitude large earthquakes occur is crucial for understanding and characterising the seismic hazard of a region. For this purpose the papers regard the recent progress in the study of recent and past seismic events on the base of the descriptions and analysis of primary effects (surface ruptures) and secondary ones (tsunamis and liquefactions).