Assessment of seismic hazard of the Japanese islands based on fractal analysis of GPS time series

Abstract

Based on the fractal analysis of the time series of the Earth’s surface vertical displacements in the region of the Japanese Archipelago, the maps of the estimates of seismic activity in the region over 2015 are constructed. The analysis of the maps revealed several segments of the territory which are prone to the emergence of significant earthquakes. The characteristic peculiarity is noted in the change of the behavior of the geophysical dynamic system—the Earth’s crust—before the occurrence of seismic events: the mechanism of transition to the critical state demonstrates the energy preservation of the low frequencies with the simultaneous energy decay of the middle and high frequencies, which differs from the behavior of the other dynamical systems.