Abstract
Rock microfracturing in the Earth’s crust preceding a seismic rupture may cause local surface deformation fields, rock dislocations, charged particle generation and motion, electrical conductivity changes, radon and other gases emission, fluid diffusion, electrokinetic, piezomagnetic and piezoelectric effects as well as climate fluctuations. Space-time anomalies of radon gas emitted in underground water, soil and near the ground air weeks to days in the epicentral areas can be associated with the strain stress changes that occurred before the occurrence of medium and strong earthquakes. This paper presents some results of continuous monitoring of radon in air near the ground with short term (ten days exposure time) solid state nuclear track detectors (SSNTD) CR-39 at seismic stations Plostina (Vrancea), and Bucharest Magurele, Romania. During 2012–2016 periods, radon concentration anomalies along with meteorological parameters were found to be statistically significant for the seismic events within the moment magnitudes Mw ≥ 5.0 and epicentral distances of 15–200 km for the Vrancea source. The frequent registered positive anomalies with constant environmental perturbation indicate the opening and closing of micro cracks within the volume of dilatancy by strain stress energy, result which is very important for short term earthquake prediction.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research by grant CNDI-UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-PT-PCCA-86/2014 VRAGEO and Program NUCLEU Contract 5N/09.03.2016, under 16 40.01.01 research theme.
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Zoran, M., Savastru, R., Savastru, D., Mateciuc, D. (2018). Presignal Signature of Radon (Rn222) for Seismic Events. In: Vacareanu, R., Ionescu, C. (eds) Seismic Hazard and Risk Assessment. Springer Natural Hazards. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74724-8_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74724-8_8
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