Earthquake Seismology:  Geology 8350 Tentative Syllabus

01/21  -        Introduction to Course (Chapter 1)

I.      Seismic Wave Theory (Chapters 3 `and 4)

A.  Body Waves (Chapter 3)

01/23  -        Ray Theory and Ray Paths

01/26  -        Eikonal Equation    

01/28  -        Travel Time Curves

01/30  -        Seismic Waveforms

B.    Surface Waves (Lay and Wallace, Chapter 4)

02/02  -        Love and Rayleigh Waves

02/04  -        Dispersion Relations

02/06  -        Interpreation of Dispersion Curves

02/09  -        Group and Phase Velocities and Applications

02/11 -        Ambient Noise

HW#1 Due

II.           Determination of Earth Structure (Lay and Wallace, Chapters 7 and 11)

A.   Introduction to Inverse Theory (Menke, Chapters 1 and 2; Lay and Wallace, Chapter 6)

02/13  -        Definition of the Inverse Problem

02/16   -        Review of Linear Algebra and Matrices

02/18  -        Application to Earthquake Location

(Project Abstracts Due)

B.    Tomography (Lay and Wallace, Chapter 7)

02/20  -        Review Body Wave Theory 

02/23  -        Parametering Tomographic Inverse Problem

02/25  -        Seismic Tomography - Travel Times

02/27  -        Seismic Tomography - Attenuation, Surface Waves

03/02  -        Resolution

C.  Waveform Approaches (Lay and Wallace, Chapter 7)

03/04  -        Teleseismic Receiver Functions:  Theory

03/06  -        Receiver Functions:  Examples and Comparisons

03/09  -        S-wave Receiver Functions

03/11  -        Shear Wave Splitting

III.    Inverse Theory

A.   Solving Linear Problems(Menke, Chapters 3 and 4)

03/13  -        Optimization Functions (Lengths) and Line Fit Example

03/16   -       Underdetermined and Mixedly Determined Problems

03/18  -        Weighting and A-Priori Constraints

03/20  -        Model and Data Resolution

03/30  -        Model and Data Co-Variance

B.   Maximum Liklihood Techniques (Menke, Chapters 5 and 6)

04/01   -      Maximum Likelihood Solution  

04/03  -       Gaussian Case

04/06  -       Null Vectors and Nonuniqueness  

    

04/08  -        Mid Term Exam (50 minutes)

 

IV.    Non-Linear and Continous Inverse Theory and Applications to Geophysics

A.   Nonlinear Inverse Theory (Menke, Chapters 7 and 9)

04/10  -        Householder Transformation

04/13   -       Solution of Mixedly Determined Problems

04/15  -        Singular Value Decomposition

04/17  -        Linearizing Parameterizations

04/20  - Monte Carlo Techniques      

B.   Tomography (Menke, Chapters 11 and Lay and Wallace, Chapter 6)

04/22  -        Backus-Gilbert Inverse Problem

04/24   -       Resolution and Variance Trade-Off

04/27  -        Tomography and Continous Inverse Theory

04/29  -        Radon Transformation

05/01  -        Backprojection

V. Student Presentations

05/04 - First Three    

05/06 - Second Three

05-08 - Written Portion of the Final Projects Due

 

Final Exam (Comprehensive)

05/12 -   8:00 am - 10:00am