Distinct Scaling Regimes of Energy Release Dynamics in the

3 images, we show that the auroral emission events that 4 initiate equatorward of the isotropic boundary (IB) ob-5 tained from a time-dependent empirical model, have sys-6 tematically steeper power-law slopes of energy, power, 7 area and lifetime probability distributions compared to 8 the events that initiate poleward of the IB. The low-9 latitude group of events contains a distinct subpopulation 10 of substorm-scale disturbances violating the power-law 11 behavior, while the high latitude group is described by 12 nearly perfect power-law statistics over the entire range 13 of scales studied. The results obtained indicate that the 14 inner and outer portions of the plasma sheet are charac-15 terized by substantially different scaling regimes of bursty 16 energy dissipation suggestive of different physics in these 17 regions.