Course abstract

Before 1970, the assessment of earthquake hazard in United States and the USSR was based solely on the historic earthquake record. But now most workers investigate seismically active faults to undertake paleoseismic studies in both regional and site-specific seismic hazard. In most of the seismically active regions of the world (including Himalayan belt) many active fault zones have no historic record for large magnitude earthquakes. Paleoseismic study is a common practice in many countries like United States, Japan, New Zealand etc. These studies have provided significant data towards recognition of individual paleoseismic (old earthquake) events, behavior of individual active fault segment, rate of faulting; reconstructing the history of large magnitude earthquakes and their repeat time etc. Paleoseismological studies are very important because they provide valuable information to the society to assess the probability and severity for the future earthquakes. This is an upcoming field in India. This course is designed for the PG as well as UG students to help them in developing their knowledge in this field.