The occupation of a box as a toy model for the seismic cycle of a fault

DOI10.1119/1.2013310zbMATH Open1130.86006arXivphysics/0502048OpenAlexW3103011882MaRDI QIDQ5449097FDOQ5449097

Authors: Álvaro Mateos González, Javier B. Gómez, Amalio F. Pacheco 

Publication date: 11 March 2008

Published in: American Journal of Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: We illustrate how a simple statistical model can describe the quasiperiodic occurrence of large earthquakes. The model idealizes the loading of elastic energy in a seismic fault by the stochastic filling of a box. The emptying of the box after it is full is analogous to the generation of a large earthquake in which the fault relaxes after having been loaded to its failure threshold. The duration of the filling process is analogous to the seismic cycle, the time interval between two successive large earthquakes in a particular fault. The simplicity of the model enables us to derive the statistical distribution of its seismic cycle. We use this distribution to fit the series of earthquakes with magnitude around 6 that occurred at the Parkfield segment of the San Andreas fault in California. Using this fit, we estimate the probability of the next large earthquake at Parkfield and devise a simple forecasting strategy.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0502048

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Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Seismology (including tsunami modeling), earthquakes (86A15)

Cited In (3)

• New model of renovation for the duration of seismic cycles
• Predictability of the large relaxations in a cellular automaton model
• One-way Markov process approach to repeat times of large earthquakes in faults

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