Parameter Estimation and Inverse Problems

Parameter Estimation and Inverse Problems, Second Edition provides geoscience students and professionals with answers to common questions like how one can derive a physical model from a finite set of observations containing errors, and how one may determine the quality of such a model. This book takes on these fundamental and challenging problems, introducing students and professionals to the broad range of approaches that lie in the realm of inverse theory. The authors present both the underlying theory and practical algorithms for solving inverse problems. The authors’ treatment is appropriate for geoscience graduate students and advanced undergraduates with a basic working knowledge of calculus, linear algebra, and statistics.

Parameter Estimation and Inverse Problems, Second Edition introduces readers to both Classical and Bayesian approaches to linear and nonlinear problems with particular attention paid to computational, mathematical, and statistical issues related to their application to geophysical problems. The textbook includes Appendices covering essential linear algebra, statistics, and notation in the context of the subject.

• Includes appendices for review of needed concepts in linear, statistics, and vector calculus.
• Accessible to students and professionals without a highly specialized mathematical background.

Professor Aster is an Earth scientist with broad interests in geophysics, seismological imaging and source studies, and Earth processes. His work has included significant field research in western North America, Italy, and Antarctica. Professor Aster also has strong teaching and research interests in geophysical inverse and signal processing methods and is the lead author on the previous two editions. Aster was on the Seismological Society of America Board of Directors, 2008-2014 and won the IRIS Leadership Award, 2014.

Dr. Borchers’ primary research and teaching interests are in optimization and inverse problems. He teaches a number of undergraduate and graduate courses at NMT in linear programming, nonlinear programming, time series analysis, and geophysical inverse problems. Dr. Borchers’ research has focused on interior point methods for linear and semidefinite programming and applications of these techniques to combinatorial optimization problems. He has also done work on inverse problems in geophysics and hydrology using linear and nonlinear least squares and Tikhonov regularization.

Professor Thurber is an international leader in research on three-dimensional seismic imaging ("seismic tomography") using earthquakes. His primary research interests are in the application of seismic tomography to fault zones, volcanoes, and subduction zones, with a long-term focus on the San Andreas fault in central California and volcanoes in Hawaii and Alaska. Other areas of expertise include earthquake location (the topic of a book he edited) and geophysical inverse theory.