Violations of Gutenberg–Richter Relation in Anthropogenic Seismicity

Urban, Pawel and Lasocki, Stanislaw and Blascheck, Patrick and do Nascimento, Aderson F. and Van Giang, Nguyen and Kwiatek, Grzegorz (2016) Violations of Gutenberg–Richter Relation in Anthropogenic Seismicity. Pure and Applied Geophysics, 173 (5). pp. 1517-1537. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-015-1188-5

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Official URL: http://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-015-1188-5

Abstract

Anthropogenic seismicity (AS) is the undesired dynamic rockmass response to technological processes. AS environments are shallow hence their heterogeneities have important impact on AS. Moreover, AS is controlled by complex and changeable technological factors. This complicated origin of AS explains why models used in tectonic seismicity may be not suitable for AS. We study here four cases of AS, testing statistically whether the magnitudes follow the Gutenberg–Richter relation or not. The considered cases include the data from Mponeng gold mine in South Africa, the data observed during stimulation of geothermal well Basel 1 in Switzerland, the data from Acu water reservoir region in Brazil and the data from Song Tranh 2 hydropower plant region in Vietnam. The cases differ in inducing technologies, in the duration of periods in which they were recorded, and in the ranges of magnitudes. In all four cases the observed frequency–magnitude distributions statistically significantly differ from the Gutenberg–Richter relation. Although in all cases the Gutenberg–Richter b value changed in time, this factor turns out to be not responsible for the discovered deviations from the Gutenberg–Richter-born exponential distribution model. Though the deviations from Gutenberg–Richter law are not big, they substantially diminish the accuracy of assessment of seismic hazard parameters. It is demonstrated that the use of non-parametric kernel estimators of magnitude distribution functions improves significantly the accuracy of hazard estimates and, therefore, these estimators are recommended to be used in probabilistic analyses of seismic hazard caused by AS.

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Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Magnitude scaling Gutenberg–Richter relation breakdown non-parametric estimation anthropogenic seismicity 1 Introduction
Subjects: Methodology > Method and procesing > Collective properties of seismicity > Source size distribution
Region > Brazil > Acu area
Region > Switzerland > Basel
Region > Vietnam > Quang Nam Province
Inducing technology > Geothermal energy production
Inducing technology > Underground mining
Inducing technology > Reservoir impoundment
Project: IS-EPOS project
IS-EPOS project > SONG TRANH: Deep water reservoir
EPOS-IP > SONG TRANH: Deep water reservoir