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Rating: 
Summary: Reference book for current seismology
Review: Lay & Wallace is an excellent blend of theory and observation. Enough equations to get you started, but not the overwhelming number you see in other theoretical seismology volumes. The best part is the reprinting of important result figures from scattered scientific journals. It is wonderful to have all these in one place. The major missing material is a treatment of computational aspects. I hope they put out new editions every few years with new figures from the journals.
Rating: 
Summary: A serious introduction to global seismology
Review: The Lay & Wallace provides a good starting description of global seismology. Chapter 1 deals with the historical development and the topics of global seismology. Chapter 2 concerns elasticity and seismic waves. The concepts of strain and stress are introduced. The mathematical content is limited (all you have to know is the partial derivatives) and a lot of figures help you to understand. By the way, this book uses the same boxes as the Aki & Richards to focus on a particular point. The equation of motion and the wave equations are derived.
Chapter 3 deals with Body waves and ray theory.The eikonal equation is introduced,and the body of this chapter concerns travel time propagation, partitioning of energy at a boundary,wave attenuation and scattering in really simple terms. Once again, a lot of figures and documents help the understanding.
Chapter 4 focuses on surface waves and free oscillations and starts with free-surface interactions, Rayleigh and Love waves and their dispersion. Tsunamis are also considered, with only two equations but 6 figures and documents. The end of the chapter is devoted to free oscillations of the earth with once again a lot of documents.
Chapter 5 deals with seismometry, that is what are the instruments used in seismology. This chapter provides differents maps of global networks of seismometers. Chapter 6 considers seismogram interpretation (identification of seismic phases). This is applied to source location. The concept of inversion is introduced with no big deal of maths. The end of the chapter concerns then the generalized inverse and requires more maths. Chapter 7 concerns the determination of Earth structure, and appears in continuity with the previous chapter. No less than 56 figures plus documents are provided to help the understanding of the earth's structure. Seismic tomography is described in simple terms. Then each "layer" of the earth is characterized in terms of seismology.
Chapter 8 focuses on seismic sources, and introduces equivalent body forces, elastostatics, elastodynamics in a very simple way. The seismic moment tensor is introduced here.
Chapter 9 deals with earthquake cinematics and dynamics. It describes the classical 1D Haskell source, the source spetrum. The concepts of stress drop, particle velocity and rupture velocity are explicited. The end of the chapter is devoted to magnitude scales, seismic energy, aftershocks, and the scaling relations of earthquakes.
Chapter 10 tackles the problem of waveform modeling. Finally Chapter 11 deals with seismotectonics and provides plenty of interesting documents. This book provides an excellent overview of global seismology. It should be extremely useful to teachers (valuable source of documents for your class) and also for those who want to start seismology. Additional reading will be necessary, eventually.
Rating:
Summary: A serious introduction to global seismology
Review: The Lay & Wallace provides a good starting description of global seismology. Chapter 1 deals with the historical development and the topics of global seismology. Chapter 2 concerns elasticity and seismic waves. The concepts of strain and stress are introduced. The mathematical content is limited (all you have to know is the partial derivatives) and a lot of figures help you to understand. By the way, this book uses the same boxes as the Aki & Richards to focus on a particular point. The equation of motion and the wave equations are derived.
Chapter 3 deals with Body waves and ray theory.The eikonal equation is introduced,and the body of this chapter concerns travel time propagation, partitioning of energy at a boundary,wave attenuation and scattering in really simple terms. Once again, a lot of figures and documents help the understanding.
Chapter 4 focuses on surface waves and free oscillations and starts with free-surface interactions, Rayleigh and Love waves and their dispersion. Tsunamis are also considered, with only two equations but 6 figures and documents. The end of the chapter is devoted to free oscillations of the earth with once again a lot of documents.
Chapter 5 deals with seismometry, that is what are the instruments used in seismology. This chapter provides differents maps of global networks of seismometers. Chapter 6 considers seismogram interpretation (identification of seismic phases). This is applied to source location. The concept of inversion is introduced with no big deal of maths. The end of the chapter concerns then the generalized inverse and requires more maths. Chapter 7 concerns the determination of Earth structure, and appears in continuity with the previous chapter. No less than 56 figures plus documents are provided to help the understanding of the earth's structure. Seismic tomography is described in simple terms. Then each "layer" of the earth is characterized in terms of seismology.
Chapter 8 focuses on seismic sources, and introduces equivalent body forces, elastostatics, elastodynamics in a very simple way. The seismic moment tensor is introduced here.
Chapter 9 deals with earthquake cinematics and dynamics. It describes the classical 1D Haskell source, the source spetrum. The concepts of stress drop, particle velocity and rupture velocity are explicited. The end of the chapter is devoted to magnitude scales, seismic energy, aftershocks, and the scaling relations of earthquakes.
Chapter 10 tackles the problem of waveform modeling. Finally Chapter 11 deals with seismotectonics and provides plenty of interesting documents. This book provides an excellent overview of global seismology. It should be extremely useful to teachers (valuable source of documents for your class) and also for those who want to start seismology. Additional reading will be necessary, eventually.
Rating:
Summary: a very complete seismological book
Review: This is an excellent book in seismology. It covers all modern aspects of this science in a complete way. The main advantage for both undergraduate and graduate students in using this book is that the Mathematical aspects are treatised without heaviness.
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