Abstract:
As we know, the statistical properties of an earthquake sequence are associated with three important empirical laws in seismology: Gutenberg-Richter law for the frequency-magnitude distribution, Båth law for the magnitude of the largest aftershock, and the modified Omori’s law for the temporal decay of aftershocks. In this paper these three laws are combined to study the February 2018 Hualien, Taiwan, China, earthquake sequence. In addition, a physics-based model proposed by Dieterich is used to describe the foreshock activities. The Hualien aftershock sequence is divided as three major sequences compounding with the
ML5.5 foreshock sequence, the
ML5.5 aftershock sequence and the
ML6.0 sequence. The results indicate that the
b values associated with Gutenberg-Richter law for the
ML5.5 aftershock sequence and the
ML6.0 aftershock sequence are approximately 1, respectively. And
b value of the
ML5.5 foreshock sequence are approximately 0.5. The
p values with associated modified Omori’s law for the
ML5.5 and
ML6.0 aftershock sequences are both approximately 0.9, respectively. The estimated maximum aftershock magnitudes based on the modified form of Båth law are about
ML5.0 and
ML5.5, respectively, for
ML5.5 and
ML6.0 aftershock sequences, and the magnitude error is within
\Delta M=0.1 with a comparison to the recorded events. We also find that, for the
ML5.5 foreshock sequence, the seismicity rate
\dot N increases as a function of 1/(
tm−
t), where
t (
t \text< t_\rmm) is the time of the foreshock and
t_\rmm is the time when the
ML5.5 earthquake occurred, respectively, which is consistent with the Dieterich earthquake triggering model, suggesting that the foreshock sequence may be related with mainshock nucleation process.