Gas geochemistry applied to earthquake prediction: An overview

Abstract

Terrestrial gases in groundwater and soil air have been extensively studied in recent years in seismically active areas, especially in USSR, China, Japan, and United States, in search of premonitory changes that might be useful for earthquake prediction. Concentrations of radon, helium, hydrogen, mercury, carbon dioxide, and several other volatiles have been found generally to be anomalously high along active faults, suggesting that the faults may be paths of least resistance for the terrestrial gases generated or stored in the earth to escape to the atmosphere. Temporal gas concentration changes with durations of a few hours to many months have been observed before many large earthquakes at a relatively small number of favorably situated stations at epicentral distances of up to several hundreds of kilometers. These “sensitive” stations are generally located along active faults, especially at intersections or bends of faults, or some other structurally weak zones, possibly because of tectonic strain concentration at such places. However, gas concentrations, especially those measured at or near the ground surface, may also be significantly affected by meteorological, hydrological, and other nontectonic changes in the environment. The nontectonically induced variations must be carefully eliminated or recognized in the search of true earthquake‐related anomalies.