A Note on Magnitude-Frequency Distribution of Earthquakes

Global frequency of magnitude 9 earthquakes

For decades seismologists have sought causal relationships between maximum earthquake sizes and other properties of subduction zones, with the underlying notion that some subduction zones may never produce a magnitude ~9 or larger event. The 2004 Andaman Mw 9.2 earthquake called into question such ideas. Given multicentury return times of the greatest earthquakes, ignorance of those return time...

Impact of Channel-like Erosion Patterns on the Frequency Magnitude Distribution of Earthquakes

Spatial variations in the frequency-magnitude distribution of earthquakes in the southwestern Okinawa Trough

The relations between the frequency of occurrence and the magnitude of earthquakes are established in the southern Okinawa Trough for 2823 relocated earthquakes recorded during a passive ocean bottom seismometer experiment. Three high b-values areas are identified: (1) for an area offshore of the Ilan Plain, south of the andesitic Kueishantao Island from a depth of 50 km to the surface, thereby...

The magnitude distribution of declustered earthquakes in Southern California.

The binned distribution densities of magnitudes in both the complete and the declustered catalogs of earthquakes in the Southern California region have two significantly different branches with crossover magnitude near M = 4.8. In the case of declustered earthquakes, the b-values on the two branches differ significantly from each other by a factor of about two. The absence of self-similarity ac...

The magnitude distribution of earthquakes near Southern California faults

[1] We investigate seismicity near faults in the Southern California Earthquake Center Community Fault Model. We search for anomalously large events that might be signs of a characteristic earthquake distribution. We find that seismicity near major fault zones in Southern California is well modeled by a Gutenberg-Richter distribution, with no evidence of characteristic earthquakes within the re...