TY - JOUR A1 - Fiedler, Bernhard A1 - Hainzl, Sebastian A1 - Zöller, Gert A1 - Holschneider, Matthias T1 - Detection of Gutenberg-Richter b-Value Changes in Earthquake Time Series JF - Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America N2 - The Gutenberg-Richter relation for earthquake magnitudes is the most famous empirical law in seismology. It states that the frequency of earthquake magnitudes follows an exponential distribution; this has been found to be a robust feature of seismicity above the completeness magnitude, and it is independent of whether global, regional, or local seismicity is analyzed. However, the exponent b of the distribution varies significantly in space and time, which is important for process understanding and seismic hazard assessment; this is particularly true because of the fact that the Gutenberg-Richter b-value acts as a proxy for the stress state and quantifies the ratio of large-to-small earthquakes. In our work, we focus on the automatic detection of statistically significant temporal changes of the b-value in seismicity data. In our approach, we use Bayes factors for model selection and estimate multiple change-points of the frequency-magnitude distribution in time. The method is first applied to synthetic data, showing its capability to detect change-points as function of the size of the sample and the b-value contrast. Finally, we apply this approach to examples of observational data sets for which b-value changes have previously been stated. Our analysis of foreshock and after-shock sequences related to mainshocks, as well as earthquake swarms, shows that only a portion of the b-value changes is statistically significant. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1785/0120180091 SN - 0037-1106 SN - 1943-3573 VL - 108 IS - 5A SP - 2778 EP - 2787 PB - Seismological Society of America CY - Albany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Salamat, Mona A1 - Zöller, Gert A1 - Zare, Mehdi A1 - Amini, Mortaza T1 - The maximum expected earthquake magnitudes in different future time intervals of six seismotectonic zones of Iran and its surroundings JF - Journal of seismology N2 - One of the crucial components in seismic hazard analysis is the estimation of the maximum earthquake magnitude and associated uncertainty. In the present study, the uncertainty related to the maximum expected magnitude mu is determined in terms of confidence intervals for an imposed level of confidence. Previous work by Salamat et al. (Pure Appl Geophys 174:763-777, 2017) shows the divergence of the confidence interval of the maximum possible magnitude m(max) for high levels of confidence in six seismotectonic zones of Iran. In this work, the maximum expected earthquake magnitude mu is calculated in a predefined finite time interval and imposed level of confidence. For this, we use a conceptual model based on a doubly truncated Gutenberg-Richter law for magnitudes with constant b-value and calculate the posterior distribution of mu for the time interval T-f in future. We assume a stationary Poisson process in time and a Gutenberg-Richter relation for magnitudes. The upper bound of the magnitude confidence interval is calculated for different time intervals of 30, 50, and 100 years and imposed levels of confidence alpha = 0.5, 0.1, 0.05, and 0.01. The posterior distribution of waiting times T-f to the next earthquake with a given magnitude equal to 6.5, 7.0, and7.5 are calculated in each zone. In order to find the influence of declustering, we use the original and declustered version of the catalog. The earthquake catalog of the territory of Iran and surroundings are subdivided into six seismotectonic zones Alborz, Azerbaijan, Central Iran, Zagros, Kopet Dagh, and Makran. We assume the maximum possible magnitude m(max) = 8.5 and calculate the upper bound of the confidence interval of mu in each zone. The results indicate that for short time intervals equal to 30 and 50 years and imposed levels of confidence 1 - alpha = 0.95 and 0.90, the probability distribution of mu is around mu = 7.16-8.23 in all seismic zones. KW - Maximum expected earthquake magnitude KW - Future time interval KW - Level of confidence KW - Iran Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-018-9780-7 SN - 1383-4649 SN - 1573-157X VL - 22 IS - 6 SP - 1485 EP - 1498 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER - TY - GEN A1 - Zöller, Gert T1 - Comment on "Estimation of Earthquake Hazard Parameters from Incomplete Data Files. Part III. Incorporation of Uncertainty of Earthquake-Occurrence Model" by Andrzej Kijko, Ansie Smit, and Markvard A. Sellevoll T2 - Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America N2 - Kijko et al. (2016) present various methods to estimate parameters that are relevant for probabilistic seismic-hazard assessment. One of these parameters, although not the most influential, is the maximum possible earthquake magnitude m(max). I show that the proposed estimation of m(max) is based on an erroneous equation related to a misuse of the estimator in Cooke (1979) and leads to unstable results. So far, reported finite estimations of m(max) arise from data selection, because the estimator in Kijko et al. (2016) diverges with finite probability. This finding is independent of the assumed distribution of earthquake magnitudes. For the specific choice of the doubly truncated Gutenberg-Richter distribution, I illustrate the problems by deriving explicit equations. Finally, I conclude that point estimators are generally not a suitable approach to constrain m(max). Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1785/0120160193 SN - 0037-1106 SN - 1943-3573 VL - 107 SP - 1975 EP - 1978 PB - Seismological Society of America CY - Albany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Shcherbakov, Robert A1 - Zhuang, Jiancang A1 - Zöller, Gert A1 - Ogata, Yosihiko T1 - Forecasting the magnitude of the largest expected earthquake JF - Nature Communications N2 - The majority of earthquakes occur unexpectedly and can trigger subsequent sequences of events that can culminate in more powerful earthquakes. This self-exciting nature of seismicity generates complex clustering of earthquakes in space and time. Therefore, the problem of constraining the magnitude of the largest expected earthquake during a future time interval is of critical importance in mitigating earthquake hazard. We address this problem by developing a methodology to compute the probabilities for such extreme earthquakes to be above certain magnitudes. We combine the Bayesian methods with the extreme value theory and assume that the occurrence of earthquakes can be described by the Epidemic Type Aftershock Sequence process. We analyze in detail the application of this methodology to the 2016 Kumamoto, Japan, earthquake sequence. We are able to estimate retrospectively the probabilities of having large subsequent earthquakes during several stages of the evolution of this sequence. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11958-4 SN - 2041-1723 VL - 10 PB - Nature Publishing Group CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Salamat, Mona A1 - Zöller, Gert A1 - Amini, Morteza T1 - Prediction of the Maximum Expected Earthquake Magnitude in Iran: BT - from a Catalog with Varying Magnitude of Completeness and Uncertain Magnitudes JF - Pure and applied geophysics N2 - This paper concerns the problem of predicting the maximum expected earthquake magnitude μ in a future time interval Tf given a catalog covering a time period T in the past. Different studies show the divergence of the confidence interval of the maximum possible earthquake magnitude m_{ max } for high levels of confidence (Salamat et al. 2017). Therefore, m_{ max } should be better replaced by μ (Holschneider et al. 2011). In a previous study (Salamat et al. 2018), μ is estimated for an instrumental earthquake catalog of Iran from 1900 onwards with a constant level of completeness ( {m0 = 5.5} ). In the current study, the Bayesian methodology developed by Zöller et al. (2014, 2015) is applied for the purpose of predicting μ based on the catalog consisting of both historical and instrumental parts. The catalog is first subdivided into six subcatalogs corresponding to six seismotectonic zones, and each of those zone catalogs is subsequently subdivided according to changes in completeness level and magnitude uncertainty. For this, broad and small error distributions are considered for historical and instrumental earthquakes, respectively. We assume that earthquakes follow a Poisson process in time and Gutenberg-Richter law in the magnitude domain with a priori unknown a and b values which are first estimated by Bayes' theorem and subsequently used to estimate μ. Imposing different values of m_{ max } for different seismotectonic zones namely Alborz, Azerbaijan, Central Iran, Zagros, Kopet Dagh and Makran, the results show considerable probabilities for the occurrence of earthquakes with Mw ≥ 7.5 in short Tf , whereas for long Tf, μ is almost equal to m_{ max } KW - Maximum expected earthquake magnitude KW - completeness levels KW - magnitude errors KW - Bayesian method KW - Iran Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-019-02141-3 SN - 0033-4553 SN - 1420-9136 VL - 176 IS - 8 SP - 3425 EP - 3438 PB - Springer CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hainzl, Sebastian A1 - Zöller, Gert A1 - Main, Ian T1 - Introduction to special issue: Dynamics of seismicity patterns and earthquake triggering - Preface JF - Tectonophysics : international journal of geotectonics and the geology and physics of the interior of the earth Y1 - 2006 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tecto.2006.03.034 SN - 0040-1951 SN - 1879-3266 VL - 424 IS - Special issue SP - 135 EP - 138 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zöller, Gert T1 - A note on the estimation of the maximum possible earthquake magnitude based on extreme value theory for the Groningen Gas Field JF - The bulletin of the Seismological Society of America : BSSA N2 - Extreme value statistics is a popular and frequently used tool to model the occurrence of large earthquakes. The problem of poor statistics arising from rare events is addressed by taking advantage of the validity of general statistical properties in asymptotic regimes. In this note, I argue that the use of extreme value statistics for the purpose of practically modeling the tail of the frequency-magnitude distribution of earthquakes can produce biased and thus misleading results because it is unknown to what degree the tail of the true distribution is sampled by data. Using synthetic data allows to quantify this bias in detail. The implicit assumption that the true M-max is close to the maximum observed magnitude M-max,M-observed restricts the class of the potential models a priori to those with M-max = M-max,M-observed + Delta M with an increment Delta M approximate to 0.5... 1.2. This corresponds to the simple heuristic method suggested by Wheeler (2009) and labeled :M-max equals M-obs plus an increment." The incomplete consideration of the entire model family for the frequency-magnitude distribution neglects, however, the scenario of a large so far unobserved earthquake. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1785/0120210307 SN - 0037-1106 SN - 1943-3573 VL - 112 IS - 4 SP - 1825 EP - 1831 PB - Seismological Society of America CY - El Cerito, Calif. ER - TY - GEN A1 - Zöller, Gert A1 - Holschneider, Matthias T1 - Reply to “Comment on ‘The Maximum Possible and the Maximum Expected Earthquake Magnitude for Production‐Induced Earthquakes at the Gas Field in Groningen, The Netherlands’ by Gert Zöller and Matthias Holschneider” by Mathias Raschke T2 - Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1785/0120170131 SN - 0037-1106 SN - 1943-3573 VL - 108 IS - 2 SP - 1029 EP - 1030 PB - Seismological Society of America CY - Albany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zoller, Gert A1 - Holschneider, Matthias A1 - Ben-Zion, Yehuda T1 - The role of heterogeneities as a tuning parameter of earthquake dynamics N2 - We investigate the influence of spatial heterogeneities on various aspects of brittle failure and seismicity in a model of a large strike-slip fault. The model dynamics is governed by realistic boundary conditions consisting of constant velocity motion of regions around the fault, static/kinetic friction laws, creep with depth-dependent coefficients, and 3-D elastic stress transfer. The dynamic rupture is approximated on a continuous time scale using a finite stress propagation velocity ("quasidynamic model''). The model produces a "brittle- ductile'' transition at a depth of about 12.5 km, realistic hypocenter distributions, and other features of seismicity compatible with observations. Previous work suggested that the range of size scales in the distribution of strength-stress heterogeneities acts as a tuning parameter of the dynamics. Here we test this hypothesis by performing a systematic parameter-space study with different forms of heterogeneities. In particular, we analyze spatial heterogeneities that can be tuned by a single parameter in two distributions: ( 1) high stress drop barriers in near- vertical directions and ( 2) spatial heterogeneities with fractal properties and variable fractal dimension. The results indicate that the first form of heterogeneities provides an effective means of tuning the behavior while the second does not. In relatively homogeneous cases, the fault self-organizes to large-scale patches and big events are associated with inward failure of individual patches and sequential failures of different patches. The frequency-size event statistics in such cases are compatible with the characteristic earthquake distribution and large events are quasi-periodic in time. In strongly heterogeneous or near-critical cases, the rupture histories are highly discontinuous and consist of complex migration patterns of slip on the fault. In such cases, the frequency-size and temporal statistics follow approximately power-law relations Y1 - 2005 SN - 0033-4553 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zoller, Gert A1 - Hainzl, Sebastian A1 - Holschneider, Matthias A1 - Ben-Zion, Yehuda T1 - Aftershocks resulting from creeping sections in a heterogeneous fault N2 - We show that realistic aftershock sequences with space-time characteristics compatible with observations are generated by a model consisting of brittle fault segments separated by creeping zones. The dynamics of the brittle regions is governed by static/kinetic friction, 3D elastic stress transfer and small creep deformation. The creeping parts are characterized by high ongoing creep velocities. These regions store stress during earthquake failures and then release it in the interseismic periods. The resulting postseismic deformation leads to aftershock sequences following the modified Omori law. The ratio of creep coefficients in the brittle and creeping sections determines the duration of the postseismic transients and the exponent p of the modified Omori law Y1 - 2005 SN - 0094-8276 ER -