Nonextensivity in Geological Faults?

TL;DR

This study tests nonextensive statistical models on earthquake data from the San Andreas fault, finding that a specific nonextensive parameter accurately fits the energy distribution of thousands of earthquakes over several decades.

Contribution

It applies Tsallis nonextensive statistics to real seismic data, validating the model's effectiveness in describing earthquake energy distributions in fault systems.

Findings

Nonextensive parameter q ≈ 1.68 fits earthquake energy data well

The model accurately describes energy distribution over a wide magnitude range

Supports nonextensive models as useful tools in seismology

Abstract

Geological fault systems, as the San Andreas fault (SAF) in USA, constitute typical examples of self-organizing systems in nature. In this paper, we have considered some geophysical properties of the SAF system to test the viability of the nonextensive models for earthquakes developed in [Phys. Rev. E {\bf 73}, 026102, 2006]. To this end, we have used 6188 earthquakes events ranging in the magnitude interval $2 < m < 8$ that were taken from the Network Earthquake International Center catalogs (NEIC, 2004-2006) and the Bulletin of the International Seismological Centre (ISC, 1964-2003). For values of the Tsallis nonextensive parameter $q \simeq 1.68$, it is shown that the energy distribution function deduced in above reference provides an excellent fit to the NEIC and ISC SAF data.