Poster #088, Earthquake Forecasting and Predictability (EFP)
Measuring robust b-values from magnitude differences
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Poster Presentation
2020 SCEC Annual Meeting, Poster #088, SCEC Contribution #10404 VIEW PDF
lete detection across the entire range of magnitudes. Here I develop a new estimator of the b-value that is relatively insensitive to transient changes in catalog completeness and allows for the real-time, unbiased measurement of b-value during an ongoing sequence. The estimator is based on the differences in magnitude between successive earthquakes, which are described by a double-exponential distribution with the same b-value as the exponential magnitude distribution itself. The new estimator broadly confirms the findings of Gulia and Wiemer [2019], showing a decrease in b-value for events between the foreshock and mainshock for several prominent foreshock sequences over the past decade – with some caveats. The new estimator greatly improves the robustness of b-value measurement during active earthquake sequences, as well as in historical catalogs with variable completeness.
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