Groundwater chemical anomalies connected with the Kamchatka earthquake (M=7.1) on March 1992

The energy released by the earthquakes occurred in the seismogenetic area of the southern Kamchatka (Russia) from January 1977 to December 2004, reveals an increase in the peak energy in the period 1992-1999. This increase is related to the occurrence of seven earthquakes with magnitude ranging from 6.9 to 7.7; the first of these earthquakes happened on 2 March 1992 with M=7.1. For many years, hydro-geochemical data have been collected with a mean sampling rate of three days, in the form of the most common ions and gases in the water of deep wells and natural springs of a network operating in the south area of the Kamchatka, where the capital city Petropavlovsk is located. The collected data were analysed and differences in the trend and in the spectral content of some hydro-geochemical parameters at the springs were pointed out before and after the occurrence of the March 1992 earthquake, indicating clear post-seismic effects. Then an evident increase in the Carbon Dioxide and in the Hydrogen content appeared practically at each measurement site during the two-four years preceding the earthquake, so that long term precursors can be claimed. Finally, an anomalous decrease in the Carbon Dioxide content at the springs was revealed two/three months prior the earthquake, as a middle term precursor. The earthquake on March 1992 was the event nearest (90-120 km) to the measurement sites that happened in last thirty years

Retrospective analysis for detecting seismic precursors in groundwater argon content

We examined the groundwater Argon content data sampled from 1988 to 2001 at two wells in Kamchatka (Russia) and anomalous increases appeared clearly during June-July 1996. On 21 June, a shallow (I km) earthquake with M=7.1 occurred at a distance less than 250km from the wells and so the previous increases could be related to this earthquake and, in particular, could be considered premonitory anomalies. In order to support this raw interpretation, we analysed the data collected in details. At first we smoothed out the high frequency fluctuations arising from the errors in a single measurement. Next we considered the known external effects on the water of a well that are the slow tectonic re-adjustment processes, the meteorology and the gravity tides and we separated these effects applying band-pass filters to the Argon content raw trends. Then we identified the largest fluctuations in these trends applying the 3 sigma criterion and we found three anomalies in a case and two anomalies in other case. Comparing the time occurrence of the anomalies at the two wells we found out that a coincidence exists only in the case of the premonitory anomalies we are studying. The simultaneous appearance of well definite anomalies in the residual trends of the same parameter at two different sites supports their meaning and the possibility that they are related to some large scale effect, as the occurrence of a strong earthquake. But, other earthquakes similar to the June 1996 event took place during the Argon content measurements time and no anomaly appeared in this content. In the past, some of the authors of this paper studied the Helium content data collected in three natural springs of the Caucasus during seven years. A very similar result, that is the simultaneous appearance of clear premonitory anomalies only on the occasion of a strong (M=7.0) but shallow (2-4 km) earthquake, was obtained. The correspondence with the case of the Caucasus validates the interpretation of the Kamchatkian anomalies as precursors

Tephrochronological dating of paleoearthquakes in active volcanic arcs: A case of the Eastern Volcanic Front on the Kamchatka Peninsula (northwest Pacific)

Investigation of active faults is crucial for the seismic hazard assessment and, in the case of volcanic belts, it provides a deeper understanding of the interactions between volcanism and tectonic faulting. In this study, we report the results of the first paleoseismological and tephrochronological investigation undertaken on Holocene faulting in Kamchatka's volcanic belts. The studied trenches and additional excavations are located along the axial fault zone of the Eastern Volcanic Front, where the earlier dated tephra layers provide a robust age control of the faulting events. Electron microprobe analysis of glass from 22 tephra samples permitted correlations among the disparate tephra profiles for constructing a summary tephra sequence. The latter, together with published geochronological data, allowed the construction of a Bayesian age model. Detailed examination of the tephra layers deformed by faulting allowed us to reconstruct and date six faulting events with the offsets of 1 to 20 cm indicating paleoearthquakes with magnitudes of Mw < 5.4. Holocene crustal seismicity of the Eastern Volcanic Front manifests temporal clustering rather than a uniform flux of events. However, no correlation between dated seismic events and the largest Holocene eruptions of proximal volcanoes was observed

Electroweak parameters of the z0 resonance and the standard model

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