The cellular seismology (CS) method of Kafka (2002, 2007) is presented as a least-astonishing null hypothesis that serves as a useful standard of comparison for other, more complex, spatial forecast methods (i.e., methods that forecast the locations, but not the times, of earthquakes). Spatial forecast methods based on analyses of earthquakes in California, such as that of Ebel et al. (2007) an...

Predictions of earthquakes that are based on observations of precursory seismicity cannot depend on the average properties of the seismicity, such as the Gutenberg-Richter (G-R) distribution. Instead it must depend on the fluctuations in seismicity. We summarize the observational data of the fluctuations of seismicity in space, in time, and in a coupled space-time regime over the past 60 yr in ...

A joint analysis of global seismicity and seismic tomography indicates that the seismic potential of continental intraplate regions is correlated with the seismic properties of the lithosphere. Archean and Early Proterozoic cratons with cold, stable continental lithospheric roots have fewer crustal earthquakes and a lower maximum earthquake catalog moment magnitude (Mcmax). The geographic shear...

The subduction of the Philippine Sea (PHS) Plate toward the north of Izu peninsula, Japan, is of great interest because intraslab seismicity is absent where the buoyant Izu volcanic arc has been subducting over the past 15 Myr. This study analyzes 42 earthquakes in an isolated seismic cluster that occurred ~ 100 km north of Izu peninsula at depths of 40–90 km and discusses seismogenesis in the ...

Between 1957 and 1982, water flooding was conducted to improve petroleum production in the Cogdell oil field north of Snyder, TX, and a contemporary analysis concluded this induced earthquakes that occurred between 1975 and 1982. The National Earthquake Information Center detected no further activity between 1983 and 2005, but between 2006 and 2011 reported 18 earthquakes having magnitudes 3 an...

The Cellular Seismology (CS) method of Kafka (2002, 2007) is presented as a leastastonishing null hypothesis that serves as a useful standard of comparison for other, more complex, spatial forecast methods (i.e., methods that forecast the locations, but not the times, of earthquakes). Spatial forecast methods based on analyses of earthquakes in California such as that of Ebel et al. (2007) and ...

Earthquakes span a tremendous range of scales, more than 5 orders of magnitude in length. Are earthquakes fundamentally the same across this huge range of scales, or are the great earthquakes somehow different from the small ones? We show that a robust scaling law seen in small earthquakes, with stress drops being independent of earthquake size, indeed holds for great earthquakes as well. The s...

The movement of tectonic plates leads to strain build-up in the Earth, which can be released during earthquakes when one side of a seismic fault suddenly slips with respect to the other. The amount of seismic strain release (or 'strain drop') is thus a direct measurement of a basic earthquake property, that is, the ratio of seismic slip over the dimension of the ruptured fault. Here the analysi...

Large subduction earthquakes on the Cascadia subduction zone pose a potential seismic hazard. Very young oceanic lithosphere (10 million years old) is being subducted beneath North America at a rate of approximately 4 centimeters per year. The Cascadia subduction zone shares many characteristics with subduction zones in southern Chile, southwestern Japan, and Colombia, where comparably young oc...

The lateral (along trench axis) variation in the mode of large earthquake occurrence near the northern Japan Trench is explained by the variation in surface roughness of the subducting plate. The surface roughness of the ocean bottom near the trench is well correlated with the large-earthquake occurrence. The region where the ocean bottom is smooth is correlated with 'typical' large underthrust...