Special Topic: Earthquakes
Published May 2010
The baseline time span for this database is (publication years) 2000-February 28, 2010 from the first bimonthly update of 2010 (a 10-year + 2-month period). The resulting database contained 21,812 (10 years) and 4,968 (2 years) papers; 30,670 authors; 149 nations; 1,619 journals; and 7,675 institutions. See additional information below in the overview & methodology sections.
- Top 20 Papers:
- Top 20 Overall:
- Time Series: 1- & 5-year periods
- Field Distribution
- Research Front Map: 2004 SUMATRA-ANDAMAN EARTHQUAKE
Interviews
Interviews with people in a wide variety of fields which pertain to this special topic of Earthquakes.
Topic Overview
While the recent earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, and China have garnered attention from the popular press worldwide, scientists, of course, have been making serious study of earthquakes for well over a century, and Special Topics has scrutinized recent highlights in this endeavor. In September of 2003, we looked at earthquake research from the 1993-2003 decade; this month, Special Topics examines the literature over the past decade and over the past two years.
Three different types of faults.
To construct the initial data pool, the keyword "earthquake*" was used was employed to search titles, abstracts, and keywords of original articles, reviews, and proceedings papers published in the Essential Science IndicatorsSM database from Thomson Reuters between January 1, 2000 and February 28, 2010. To make the paper lists more on-point, we restricted this keyword to title use only.
In 2003, the 1992 Landers, California, earthquake was the most studied in the analysis. In the current analysis, the 2004 Sumatran-Andaman earthquake in Indonesia is the most studied on the 10-year paper list, and the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China is the most studied on the two-year list.
Other earthquakes studied on the 10-year list of papers include aforementioned Landers quake, the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake sequence in Taiwan, the 1999 Hector mine quake in California, the 1999 Izmit quake in Turkey, the 2000 Izu islands earthquake swarm, and the 2002 Denali fault earthquake in Alaska.
Tools and methods for the study and prediction of earthquakes are also examined on the 10-year list of papers and include earthquake location algorithms, interaction-based probability calculations, earthquake catalogues, and a unified scaling law. Other physical aspects earthquakes, such as fault slippage, rupture processes, and temporal occurrence factors, are also addressed. Finally, one paper looks at posttraumatic stress, anxiety, and depressive reactions after earthquake trauma or severe violence.
Specific earthquakes studied on the two-year list of papers include the 2004 Parkfield, California, quake, the 2006-2007 Kuril islands quakes in the western Pacific Ocean, and the 2007 Niigata-ken Chuetsi-oki quake in Japan.
Aspects of seismology studied in the past two years include lithospheric structure and deep earthquakes below India, the Himalaya, and Tibet, development of an earthquake early warning system, earthquake nucleation, aftershock imaging, tsunami activity, damage rheology models, and focal zone activity.
The publication of the third Database of Individual Seismogenic Sources (DISS), which details Italy's earthquake geology research over a 20-year period, is discussed. Two studies also discuss modeling aspects of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
SPECIAL TOPIC KEYWORDS: EARTHQUAKE, FAULT, RUPTURE PROCESS, SCALING LAW, LOCATION ALGORITHM, PROBABILITY CALCULATION, FOCAL DEPTHS, ELASTIC THICKNESS, CONTINENTAL LITHOSPHERE, SLIP PARTITION, SEISMICITY, DEFORMATION, DISPLACEMENT, MANTLE FLOW, GPS MEASUREMENTS, HI-NET ARRAY, POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS, DEPRESSION, SLIP RATES, RECURRENCE INTERVALS, DISS, STRESS CHANGES, DYNAMIC RESPONSES, SEISMIC STRESS TRANSFER CYCLE, NGA EMPIRICAL MODEL, HORIZONAL SPECTRAL VALUES, EARLY WARNING SYSTEM, GROUND-MOTION ESTIMATES, AFTERSHOCK DISTRIBUTION, DAMAGE RHEOLOGY MODEL, TSUNAMI, ISOCHRONE THEORY, HAYWARD FAULT, SUMATRA-ANDAMAN, CHI-CHI, DENALI FAULT, IZU ISLANDS EARTHQUAKE SWARM, IZMIT, HECTOR MINE, LANDERS, WENCHUAN, 1906 SAN FRANCISCO, NIIGATAKEN CHUETSU-OKI, PARKFIELD CALIFORNIA, GREAT KURIL.
Methodology
The baseline time span for this database is (publication years) 2000-February 28, 2010 from the first bimonthly update of 2010 (a 10-year + 2-month period). The resulting database contained 21,812 (10 years) and 4,968 (2 years) papers; 30,670 authors; 149 nations; 1,619 journals; and 7,675 institutions.
Rankings
Once the database was in place, it was used to generate list of authors, journals, institutions, and nations. Rankings for author, journal, institution, and country are listed in three ways: according to total cites, total papers, and total cites/paper*. The paper thresholds and corresponding percentages used to determine scientist, institution, country, and journal rankings according to total cites/paper, and total papers respectively are as follows:
Entity | Authors | Institutions | Journals | Nations |
---|---|---|---|---|
Thresholds | 18 | 105 | 12 | >= 5* |
Percentage: | 1% | 1% | 50% | 50% |
*Unless otherwise specified, all rankings have a >= 5 paper threshold for all measures. |
Please note: Due to an error in the source data, the records for Yehuda Ben-Zion, the University of Southern California, and the United States were changed. This adjustment resulted in a change in ranking for Yehuda Ben-Zion, as well as the inclusion of a paper (#5) on the two-year listing. Added May 12, 2020.
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