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Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 058501 (2003) [4 pages]

Is Earthquake Triggering Driven by Small Earthquakes?

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Agnès Helmstetter*
Laboratoire de Géophysique Interne et Tectonophysique, Observatoire de Grenoble, Université Joseph Fourier, France

Received 27 January 2003; published 29 July 2003

See accompanying Physics Focus

Using a catalog of seismicity for Southern California, we measure how the number of triggered earthquakes increases with the earthquake magnitude. The trade-off between this relation and the distribution of earthquake magnitudes controls the relative role of small compared to large earthquakes. We show that seismicity triggering is driven by the smallest earthquakes, which trigger fewer events than larger earthquakes, but which are much more numerous. We propose that the nontrivial scaling of the number of triggered earthquakes emerges from the fractal spatial distribution of seismicity.

© 2003 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.058501
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.058501
PACS:
91.30.Dk, 89.75.Da, 91.30.Bi, 91.30.Px

*Now at Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095-1567, USA

 
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