Open AccessQuantitative earthquake forecasts resulting from static stress triggering
Author(s) -
Hainzl S.,
Brietzke G. B.,
Zöller G.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: solid earth
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.67
H-Index - 298
eISSN - 2156-2202
pISSN - 0148-0227
DOI - 10.1029/2010jb007473
Subject(s) - aftershock , foreshock , magnitude (astronomy) , shock (circulatory) , seismology , geology , seismic hazard , stress (linguistics) , scaling , earthquake simulation , power law , physics , statistics , mathematics , medicine , linguistics , philosophy , geometry , astronomy
In recent years, the triggering of earthquakes has been discussed controversially with respect to the underlying mechanisms and the capability to evaluate the resulting seismic hazard. Apart from static stress interactions, other mechanisms including dynamic stress transfer have been proposed to be part of a complex triggering process. Exploiting the theoretical relation between long‐term earthquake rates and stressing rate, we demonstrate that static stress changes resulting from an earthquake rupture allow us to predict quantitatively the aftershock activity without tuning specific model parameters. These forecasts are found to be in excellent agreement with all first‐order characteristics of aftershocks, in particular, (1) the total number, (2) the power law distance decay, (3) the scaling of the productivity with the main shock magnitude, (4) the foreshock probability, and (5) the empirical Båth law providing the maximum aftershock magnitude, which supports the conclusion that static stress transfer is the major mechanism of earthquake triggering.