Long-period source characteristics of the great 1964 Alaska earthquake

1964年的阿拉斯加地震是有仪器记录的第二大地震。目前对这场地震的长期震源特征的估计，包括地震规模和断裂几何以及时刻释放的时间和分布，可以追溯到20世纪70年代。所有这些估计都是在现代地震记录合成和矩-张量测定方法发展之前进行的。2004年12月26日苏门答腊-安达曼群岛(MW9.2)地震的发生重新引起了人们对我们对1964年阿拉斯加地震的了解，因为阿拉斯加地震是最自然的比较对象。拟议的研究将利用现有的手持数字化的、高质量的1964年主震的面波地震图，对地震矩张量、质心位置和深度以及质心时间进行反演；地球横向速度不均匀的影响将在反演中考虑在内。由于1964年地震的规模非常大，而且现有的数据对应于晚到的面波轨道，因此将进行几次实验来验证所获得的结果。这项研究的结果也将直接用于其他大地震的比较研究，包括2004年苏门答腊岛-安达曼群岛地震。此外，对1964年地震的现有手写数字化数据进行存档的拟议工作预计将使对地震动力学和地球结构感兴趣的研究人员受益。这项研究将支持一位职业生涯早期的科学家。在项目结束时，使用的数据将被永久存档，以供其他研究人员将来使用。

The 1964 Alaska earthquake is the second-largest earthquake ever recorded instrumentally. Currentestimates of the long-period source characteristics of this earthquake, including the earthquake sizeand faulting geometry and the timing and distribution of moment release, date from the 1970s. Allof these estimates were made before the development of modern methods of seismogram synthesisand moment-tensor determination. The occurrence of the 26 December, 2004 Sumatra-AndamanIslands earthquake (MW 9.2) has returned attention to the state of our knowledge about the1964 Alaska earthquake, as the Alaska earthquake presents the most natural target for comparison.The proposed research will make use of existing hand-digitized, high-quality surface-waveseismograms from the 1964 mainshock in an inversion for the earthquake moment tensor, centroidlocation and depth, and centroid time; effects of Earth's lateral velocity heterogeneity will be accountedfor in the inversion. Owing to the very large size of the 1964 earthquake, and to the fact that the available data correspond to late-arriving surface-wave orbits, several experiments will be carried out to validate the results obtained. Results obtained from this study will also be of direct use for comparative studiesof other large earthquakes, including the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman Islands earthquake. In addition,the proposed effort to archive the available, hand-digitized data from the 1964 earthquake isanticipated to benefit researchers interested in both earthquake dynamics and Earth structure.The research will support an early-career scientist. At the conclusion of the project, the data used will be permanently archived to make them available for future use by other researchers.