Precursory Phenomena Prior to Earthquakes (2nd Edition)

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Geosciences aims to gather high-quality original research articles, reviews, and technical notes on the topic of precursory phenomena that occur prior to earthquakes.

Several types of emissions are detected prior to earthquakes, which provide a potential data source from which seismic predictions can be made. Recent research suggests that specific pre-seismic activity can be directly related to specific earthquakes, although this is still an open issue. It is still unclear how pre-seismic emissions and subsequent earthquake events can be linked with accuracy. Known precursors include the electromagnetic radiation of a wide frequency range from ultra-low frequencies (ULFs) between 0.001 and 1 Hz, low frequencies (LFs) between 1 and 10 kHz, and high frequencies (HFs) between 40 and 60 MHz to very high frequencies (VHFs) up to 300 MHz. Enhanced radon gas emissions before earthquakes also count as significant precursors, and have an equally long history and surrounding debate in association with seismic activity. The pre-earthquake activity of radon gas and progeny has been observed in the atmosphere, surface water, groundwater, and underground water, and in soil gas, thermal spas, active faults, volcanic processes, and other seismotectonic environments. Related research also includes observations of several trace gases, e.g., CO2 in active faults, satellite measurements, and remote sensing techniques, surface mapping, and other earthquake activity observations and studies. The research field adopts diverging types of methodological approaches, such as those related to the stochastic and statistical behavior of earthquake-related systems, fractals, long memory, fractal dimension, Hurst exponents, entropy, symbolic dynamics, DFA and MFDFA, R/S analysis, spectral analysis, Fourier analysis and wavelets, signal analysis, and signal processing. All the above topics are indicative of the phenomenon.

The problem of earthquake prediction is a significant challenge among the scientific community, with several reported attempts to resolve issues related to the discovery of credible and unambiguous pre-earthquake precursors, especially for strong and catastrophic earthquakes. The whole study area is multifaceted and involves several types of measurements and analysis methods. For the above reasons, I would like to invite you to submit recent articles, experimental research papers, and case studies, with respect to the topics described above. Papers on the interconnection of the above topics are strongly encouraged.

I invite you to submit a short abstract outlining the purpose of the research and the principal results obtained, in order to verify at an early stage whether the contribution you intend to submit fits with the objectives of this Special Issue.

The publications in the first volume, which we believe may be of interest to you, can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/geosciences/special_issues/AYN08Z815H.

Prof. Dr. Dimitrios Nikolopoulos
Guest Editor

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• electromagnetism
• radon
• earthquakes
• remote sensing
• design of experiments
• data analysis: algorithms and implementation
• data management
• modeling and simulation
• satellite measurements
• self-organized systems
• non-linear dynamics and chaos
• fractals
• seismic source mechanisms