Distributions of Earthquake Recurrence Times on the San Andreas Fault System

Ching-Ying Hsu

Abstract

The distribution of recurrence times of large earthquakes is a key ingrediant for seismic-hazard assessment (Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities, 2003). Because of a lack of observational data, the exact shape of this distribution for real fault systems is speculative. Assumed distributions include the Weibull (stretched exponential) distribution, the lognormal distribution, and the Brownian passage-time (inverse Gaussian) distribution. The distribution of earthquake waiting times is the conditional probability that an earthquake will occur at a time in the future if it has not occurred for a specified time in the past. The distribution of waiting times is very sensitive to the distribution of recurrence times. We use the “Virtual California” model for earthquake occurrence on the San Andreas fault system to produce a synthetic distribution of earthquake recurrence times on various faults in the San Andreas system.

Besides, according to available evidence there is considerable variability in both the recurrence times and in the magnitudes of characteristic earthquakes. This variability can be attributed to the interactions between faults and fault segments. So we study the effect of fault interaction on the recurrence time distribution of large earthquakes on the same fault.

References

Gleb Yakovlev, Donald L. Turcotte, John B. Rundle, and Paul B. Rundle, Simulation-Based Distributions of Earthquake Recurrence Times on the San Andreas Fault System, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. Vol. 96, No. 6, pp. 1995–2007, December 2006

 (Abstract) (Full text)

G. Zo‥ller and S. Hainzl, Recurrence Time Distributions of Large Earthquakes in a Stochastic Model for Coupled Fault Systems: The Role of Fault Interaction, Bull. Seism. Soc. Am. Vol. 97, No. 5, pp. 1679–1687, October 2007

(Abstract) (Full text)