中国の地震学と地震予報

Abstract

Since 1974 informations on the rapid development in the field of earth science in China have beenqiven by exchange of seismologists between Japan and China. Seismology in China has been deve-loped mainly based on the practice of earthquake predictions since 1966. For the long term predi-ction of large earthquakes, the stress field in China has been studied from the historical data of theseismicity, the distribution of active faults and the mechanism of the block movements of the crust.Short term or imminent predictions of occurrences of large earthquakes were successfully releas-ed from many kinds of data showing sudden changes in the natural phenomena. Variations of thecontents of groundwater, level of groundwater, telluric current and resistivity and geomagnetic variat-ions have been recorded and analyzed for the imminent prediction. Variations of tilting movementand stress field in the bed rock have been also analyzed and used for the practical forecasts of earth-quakes. The synthesized information from these scientific observations and from direct visual obser-vations of nature by the masses is used for the imminent prediction.Chinese seismologists are now preparing the next step of progress by the expansion in the found-amental field of earth science.