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Seismic shear-wave splitting (SWS) monitors the low-level deformation of fluid-saturated microcracked rock. We report evidence of systematic SWS changes, recorded above small earthquakes, monitoring the accumulation of stress before earthquakes that allows the time and magnitude of impending large earthquakes to be stress-forecast. The effects have been seen with hindsight before some 15 earthquakes ranging in magnitude from an M1.7 seismic swarm event in Iceland to the Ms7.7 Chi-Chi Earthquake in Taiwan, including a successfully stress-forecast of a M5.0 earthquake in SW Iceland. Characteristic increases in SWS time-delays are observed before large earthquakes, which abruptly change to deceases shortly before the earthquake occurs. There is a linear relationship between magnitudes and logarithms of durations of both increases and decreases in SWS time-delays before large impending earthquakes. However, suitably persistent swarms of small earthquakes are too scarce for routine stress-forecasting. Reliable forecasting requires controlled-source cross-hole seismics between neighbouring boreholes in stress-monitoring sites (SMS). It would be possible to stress-forecast damaging earthquakes worldwide by a global network of SMS in real time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liu et al. (2004) systematically analyze the parameters of shear-wave splitting before and after the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake in Taiwan. They claim that they see no evidence for the temporal changes in shear-wave time delays, which some of us use to monitor the buildup of stress before earthquakes. In fact, the only diagram where one would expect to see the type of temporal changes observed elsewhere, figure 14a in Liu et al. (2004), does show two types of temporal variations of time delays. Here, we fit least-squares lines to these temporal changes and show that the duration/earthquake-magnitude relationships of these various changes agree very well with those seen elsewhere. Thus, the behavior before the Chi-Chi earthquake lends further support to the use of shear-wave splitting to stress-forecast the times and magnitudes of impending earthquakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]