A non-universal aspect in the temporal occurrence of earthquakes

概要

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It has been emphasized that the temporal occurrence of earthquakes in various spatial areas and over ranges of magnitude may be described by a unique distribution of inter-earthquake intervals under suitable rescaling,implying the presence of a universal mechanism governing seismicity.Nevertheless, it is possible that some features in the fine temporal patterns ofevent occurrences differ between spatial regions, reflecting different conditionsthat cause earthquakes, such as relative motion of tectonic plates sharinga boundary. By abstracting the non-Poissonian feature from non-stationarysequences using a metric of local variation of event intervals Lv, we find a widerange of non-Poissonian burstiness present in the temporal event occurrences indifferent spatial areas. Firstly, the degree of bursty features in the occurrence ofearthquakes depends on spatial location; earthquakes tend to be bursty in areaswhere they are less frequent. Secondly, systematic regional differences remaineven if the overall correlation between burstiness and the rate of event occurrenceis eliminated. Thirdly, the degree of burstiness is particularly high on divergenttectonic boundaries compared to convergent and transform boundaries. In this way, temporal patterns of event occurrences bear witness to the circumstances underlying event generation.
2010-06-01