[The articles of this volume will not be indexed individually.]
The book, written by a team of specialists from throughout the world, brings together in an organized and surveyable way a selection of basic and advanced methods and algorithms used in seismology. The book presents the background information on seismological theory and methods (some of them new) as well as the algorithms for practical use.
The book is divided into five parts, followed by a program index and a subject index. The first part devoted to “Rays and body waves in one- dimensional media” deals with: special synthesis of body waves in Earth models specified by vertically varying layers; the simplest extension of geometrical ray theory called “WKBJ seismogram” for the modelling of nongeometrical signals; the evolution of travel-time perturbation due to asphericity. The second part called “Rays and body waves in three- dimensional media” is dealing with complete seismic ray tracing in three-dimensional structures and numerical methods for tracing rays and wavefronts. The third part: “Reflectivity methods for stratified media” presents: systematic approcimations to the seismic wavefield; hybrid methods in reflectivity calculations, and quadrature of wavenumber integrals. The fourth part presents various mode methods for stratified media as a subroutine package (DISPER 80) for the calculations of seismic normal-mode solutions; the calculation of eigenfrequencies and eigenfunctions of the free oscillations of the Earth and the Sun, and variational methods (Rayleigh-Ritz algorithm). The last part of the book presents “utility algorithms and sources”: vector and matrix manipulation algorithms; radiation from a momentum surce (treating the seismic sources as deviation from the elastically predicted stress state); single and joint fault-plane solutions from first-motion data.
The book is a nice piece of work showing that a variety of chapters on mathematics are necessary in the today seismology and exploration geophysics. Since algorithms and programs are also given in the book (based on ray and generalized ray methods, reflectivity methods and normal mode methods) as well as many examples, the book may be of interest for a large variety of readers, including the students.