Fractal Properties of the Distribuation of Earthquake Hypocenters

Keith Nakanishi, Muhammad Sahimi, Michelle Robertson Haver, Charles G. Sammis, & Mark D. Rintoul

Published March 1993, SCEC Contribution #334

We investigate a recent suggestion that the spatial distribution of earthquake hypocenters makes a fractal set with a structure and fractal dimensionality close to those of the backbone of critical percolation clusters, by analyzing four different sets of data for the hypocenter distributions and calculating the dynamical properties of the geometrical distribution such as the spectral dimension ds We find that the value of ds is consistent with that of the backbone, thus supporting further the identification of the hypocenter distribution as having the structure of the percolation backbone.

Citation
Nakanishi, K., Sahimi, M., Robertson Haver, M., Sammis, C. G., & Rintoul, M. D. (1993). Fractal Properties of the Distribuation of Earthquake Hypocenters. Journal de Physique I, 3(3), 733-739. doi: 10.1051/jp1:1993158 .