Characteristics of the low energy seismicity of central Apulia (southern Italy) and hazard implications     

V.?Del?GaudioEmail author  P.?Pierri  G.?Calcagnile  N.?Venisti 《Journal of Seismology》2005,9(1):39-59

The central part of the Apulia region, in southern Italy, has been generally considered practically free from significant level of seismicity, but historical documentation, geological indicators and recent instrumental observations suggest that the activity of local minor tectonic structures could have been masked (and partly also induced) by that of major seismogenic structures located in the neighbouring regions. A revision of the central Apulia seismicity characteristics was conducted considering its space and time distribution, energy release rate and focal mechanisms, in view of possible hazard implications. To better constrain the seismicity rates inferable from the set of available historical data, special attention was paid to the declustering of a catalogue of low energy events (magnitude < 3.5) instrumentally detected in about 20 years: a new declustering procedure, useful for cases like to the one at hand, was purposely devised taking into account the peculiarity of local seismicity characteristics and the limitations of the available database. The results obtained by combining instrumental and historical data show that this area is affected by a rather sporadic seismicity, likely associated to a general tensional regime and possibly stimulated by the interaction with Apenninic and northern Apulia seismogenic activity. Even though less energetic, the local seismicity contributes to increase the moderately damaging shaking probability due to the activity of seismic sources located in the near areas, so to justify the adoption of at least a minimum level of caution in relation to the local definition of seismic protection measures.  相似文献   

The seismic activity in Syria and Palestine during the middle of the 8th century; an amalgamation of historical earthquakes     

N.?N.?AmbraseysEmail author 《Journal of Seismology》2005,9(1):115-125

Some historical earthquakes are distinct owing to the geographical distance of the places affected. It is less clear, however, when more than one earthquake is amalgamated into a single event and their combined effects are attributed to a major event. In order to avoid gross overestimation of the size of historical earthquakes the separation and identification of the constituent earthquakes is an important consideration. As an example we show how the tendency of early and modern writers to amalgamate or duplicate earthquakes in Syria and Palestine can lead to the creation of major earthquakes, with serious consequences for the assessment of the seismic hazard in the region.  相似文献   

Multifractal and Chaotic Analysis of Vrancea (Romania) Intermediate-depth Earthquakes: Investigation of the Temporal Distribution of Events     

B.?EnescuEmail author  K.?Ito  M.?Radulian  E.?Popescu  O.?Bazacliu 《Pure and Applied Geophysics》2005,162(2):249-271

The Vrancea seismic region contains an isolated cluster of events beneath the Carpathian Arc Bend in Romania, dipping to about 200 km depth. Seismic activity mainly occurs at intermediate depths (h > 60 km). The main goal of the paper is to perform an in-depth, complex analysis of the occurrence times of these intermediate-depth events. We also try to show the versatility of the methods used to characterize different aspects of the seismicity evolution and to offer a user-friendly software toolbox to do most of the related computations. The earthquake catalog used in this study spans from 1974 to 2002 and includes only the intermediate-depth events. In the first part of the paper, we analyze the multifractal characteristics of the temporal distribution of earthquakes. The study reveals two distinct scaling regimes. At small scales we found a clear nonhomogeneous, multifractal pattern, while at large scales the temporal distribution of events shows a monofractal, and close to Poissonian (random), behavior. The multifractal behavior at small scales (minutes-hours) is shown to be clearly an effect of the short aftershock sequences that occurred after some major Vrancea earthquakes. In the second part of the paper we analyze whether our temporal series shows a persistent (or anti-persistent) long-term behavior, by using the Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA) method. The results suggest that the analyzed temporal series of Vrancea earthquakes is a non-correlated process. In part three of the paper we seek to determine whether the dynamics of our earthquake system (described by the occurrence time of Vrancea earthquakes) is deterministically chaotic, deriving from a rather simple evolution law, or whether it is stochastic and is generated by a system that possesses many degrees of freedom. The results suggest that our signal is stochastic (probably does not possess an attractor). The limited time-span of the catalog and the analysis performed in this paper cannot rule out the emergence of an interesting, quasi-deterministic and low-dimensional structure in the case of major Vrancea earthquakes.Acknowledgement One of the authors (BE) is grateful to the Japanese Ministry of Education for providing him a Monbusho scholarship for studying in DPRI, Kyoto University. We thank Z.R. Struzik, M Holschneider, J. Mori and D. Kaplan for their useful comments, and acknowledge the support of the staff of DPRI, Kyoto University and the National Inst. for Earth Physics, Bucharest. We thank the two reviewers, M.B. Geilikman and M. Anghel, for their useful suggestions which improved the quality of this work.  相似文献   

The relationship between the earthquakes of Ningbo area and the Neotectonic movement     

陈家庚  陈存国  王里  李博惠  奚云 《地震学报(英文版)》1998,11(3):337-347

ＴｈｅｒｅｌａｔｉｏｎｓｈｉｐｂｅｔｗｅｎｔｈｅｅａｒｔｈｑｕａｋｅｓｏｆＮｉｎｇｂｏａｒｅａａｎｄｔｈｅＮｅｏｔｅｃｔｏｎｉｃｍｏｖｅｍｅｎｔＪＩＡＧＥＮＧＣＨＥＮ１）（陈家庚）ＣＵＮＧＵＯＣＨＥＮ２）（陈存国）ＬＩＷＡＮＧ２）（王里）ＢＯ...  相似文献   

Nonlinear magnitude frequency relation and two types of seismicity systems     

Shi-Jun Chen  Zhi-Cai Wang  Jiu-Qing Tao 《地震学报(英文版)》1998,11(2):207-218

A nonlinear magnitude frequency equation has been derived in this paper on the assumption that all seismicity systems hold fractal characteristics, and according to the differences of relevant coefficients in the equation, seismicity systems are classified into two types: type I, the whole earthquake activity is controlled by only one great unified system; type II, the whole earthquake activity is controlled by more than one great system. One type of seismicity system may convert to the other type, generally. For example, a type I system will change to a type II system prior to the occurrence of a strong earthquake in North China. This change can be regarded as an index for earthquake trend estimation. In addition, the difference between b value in nonlinear magnitude frequency equation and that in linear equation and the term dΔM related to the coefficients of nonlinear terms obtained in this paper are proved to be a pair of available parameters for medium short term earthquake prediction.  相似文献   

Geographical and vertical variation of the earth's seismicity     

Theodoros M. Tsapanos  Basil C. Papazachos 《Journal of Seismology》1998,2(3):183-192

Information concerning a total number of 13700 instrumentally recorded earthquakes is used to study the geographical and the vertical distribution of the Earth's seismicity. From these earthquakes, which form four complete samples of data (M 7.0, 1894–1992; M 6.5, 1930–1992; M 6.0, 1953–1992; M 5.5, 1966–1992), 11511 are shallow (h 60 km), 2085 are of intermediate focal depth (61 h 300 km) and 564 are deep focus earthquakes (301 h 720 km). The parameters a and b of the frequency-magnitude relationship were calculated in a grid of equally spaced points at 1° by using the data of earthquakes located inside circles centered at each point. The radius of the circles increased from 30 km with a step of 10 km until the information for the earthquakes located inside the circle fulfil three criteria which concern the size of the sample used to compute these parameters at each point of the grid. The results are given in a qualitative way (epicenter maps) as well as in a quantitative way (mean return periods).  相似文献   

Relocation of shallow earthquakes in southern Alaska using Joint Hypocenter Determination method     

Natalia A. Ratchkovsky  Jose Pujol  Niren N. Biswas 《Journal of Seismology》1998,2(1):87-102

A subset of 2660 shallow earthquakes (0–50 km) that occurred from 1988 to 1996 in south central Alaska between 155°W and 145°W and 59°N and 63°N was relocated using the joint hypocenter determination (JHD) method. Both P- and S-wave observations recorded by the regional seismic network were used. Events were relocated in twenty different groups based on their geographic location and depth using two velocity models. As a result of the relocation, the majority of the hypocenters shifted downward, while the epicenter locations did not change significantly. The distribution of the shallow subduction zone earthquakes indicates the existence of two seismically independent blocks, with one block occupying the northeastern part and the other occupying the central and western parts of the study area. The boundary between the blocks is marked by a 15 to 20 km wide seismicity gap to the southeast of 149.5°W and 62°N. The analysis of the fault plane solutions for shallow subduction zone earthquakes shows that an overwhelming majority of the solutions represent normal, oblique-normal or strike-slip faulting with predominant WNW-ESE orientation of T-axes. This indicates a down-dip extensional regime for the subducting slab at shallow depths. Very few earthquakes yielded fault plane solutions consistent with thrusting on a contact zone between the overriding and subducting plates. This result may be an indication that currently either the strain energy is not released at the contact zone or it is associated with aseismic motion.  相似文献   

燕山水库的主要环境工程地质问题     

杨锋  杨裕云  刘佑荣 《河南国土资源》1998,(1)

本文在简要介绍燕山水库工程地质环境的基础上,分析论述了可能产生的环境工程地质问题。指出水库淹没及浸没、水库诱发地震、坝基渗透变形及膨胀土体稳定问题是该水库的主要环境工程地质问题,并提出了进一步研究的途径。  相似文献   

Simulation of seismicity due to fluid migration in a fault zone   总被引：5，自引：0，他引：5  

Teruo Yamashita 《Geophysical Journal International》1998,132(3):674-686

Spatio-temporal variation of rupture activity is modelled assuming fluid migration in a narrow, porous fault zone formed along a vertical strike-slip fault in a semi-infinite elastic medium. The principle of the effective stress coupled to the Coulomb failure criterion introduces mechanical coupling between fault slip and the pore fluid. The fluid is assumed to flow out of a localized high-pressure fluid compartment in the fault at the onset of earthquake rupture. The duration of the earthquake sequence is assumed to be much shorter than the recurrence period of characteristic events on the fault. Both an earthquake swarm and a foreshock–main-shock sequence can be simulated by changing the relative magnitudes of the initial tectonic stress, pore fluid pressure, fracture strength and so on. When an inhomogeneity is introduced into the spatial distribution of fracture strength, high complexity is observed in the spatio-temporal variation of rupture activity. For example, the time interval between two successive events is highly irregular, and a relatively long quiescence of activity is sometimes observed in a foreshock–main-shock sequence. The quiescence is caused by the temporary arresting of rupture extension, due to an encounter with fault segments having locally high strengths. The frequency–magnitude statistics of intermediate-size events obey the Gutenberg–Richter relation. The calculations show the temporal variation of the b value during some foreshock sequences, and the degree of the change seems to depend on the statistical distribution of the fracture strength.  相似文献   

Seismic quiescence before the M 7, 1988, Spitak earthquake, Armenia   总被引：7，自引：0，他引：7  

Max Wyss  & Artak H. Martirosyan 《Geophysical Journal International》1998,134(2):329-340

A detailed analysis of the 35  yr of seismicity between 1962 and 1997 using a gridding technique shows that the M 7, Spitak earthquake of 1988 December 7 was preceded by a quiescence anomaly that started at approximately 1984±0.5, and lasted about 5±0.5  yr, up to the main shock. This quiescence anomaly had a radius of about 20±3  km, estimated from circular areas with 75 per cent rate decrease, centred at the point of maximum significance of the anomaly. The quiescence was clearly present in the aftershock volume during the 5  yr before the 1988 main shock, but its statistically strongest expression was located 30  km NW of the epicentre. This anomaly fulfills the association rules between precursory quiescence anomalies and main shocks, even for a tight definition, and is therefore proposed as a case of precursory quiescence. The largest value of the standard deviate Z , found by random selection of samples by gridding, was Z =14 for a time window of T _w=3  yr, using a sample size of N =300 events. This makes this anomaly the strongest observed so far, and it is the first documented in an environment of continental collision. There are no false alarms exceeding in significance the precursor. The Armenian earthquake catalogue used for this study had 4600 earthquakes with M ≥ M _min=2.2 in the area bounded by 39.5° to 42°N/42.5° to 47°E. From the point of view of homogeneous reporting this is the best catalogue we have analysed so far. The limits of the data used and the density of the grid are dictated by the data, and have no influence on the results. The choice of free parameters does not influence the results significantly within the following limits: 100≤ N ≤500, 2≤ T _w≤7, 2.2≤ M _min≤2.8.  相似文献