Earthquake Precursors: Identification, Validation and Physical Mechanisms

Introduction

Earthquake prediction remains a major scientific challenge and controversial topic. The current view is that individual earthquakes cannot be accurately predicted. Nonetheless, there have been a few notable achievements, including the successful prediction of the Haicheng M7.3 earthquake in Liaoning Province, Northeast China, that occurred on February 4^th,1975. Although the prediction was made at local levels, it played a crucial role in saving thousands of lives. The success cannot be achieved without the observation of precursory anomalies, including the swarm foreshock sequence and other geodetic and geochemical measurements. 

Recently, there has been renewed interest in studying earthquake precursory phenomenon, largely driven by improved ultra-dense near-field observations by seismic and geodetic recordings, availability of big data, and new developments in machine learning methods in earthquake science.

On this 50th anniversary of the successful prediction of the Haicheng earthquake, we launch a special issue that focuses on the latest advances and limitations in earthquake precursor study.

The featured topics

(including but not limited to)

• Identification and test of precursory phenomena in seismicity or other geophysical/geochemical/remote sensing observations before large earthquakes
• Physical predictability of earthquakes and its observational evidences
• Physical models for precursory anomalies
• New insights into the spatial-temporal statistical pattern of seismicity
• Coupling of multiple precursors and the mechanisms
• Generative artificial intelligence and large foundation models for earthquake science
• Multi-modal Machine Learning for earthquake monitoring and forecasting

Submission Instructions

Please read the Guide for Authors before submitting. All articles should be submitted online , please select [VSI-Earthquake Precursors ：Identification, Validation and Physical Mechanisms] on submission.

Submission deadline: September 30^th 2025

Guest Editors

Dr. Qi-Fu Chen

Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

chenqf@mail.iggcas.ac.cn

Dr. Zhigang Peng

Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

zpeng@gatech.edu

Dr. Peng Han

Southern University of Science and Technology, China

hanp@sustech.edu.cn

Dr. Rui Yan

China Earthquake Networks Center, China

ray_2005@163.com

Dr. Hengshu Zhu

Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

hszhu@cnic.cn