Bayesian probabilities of earthquake occurrences in Longmenshan fault system (China)

Abstract

China has a long history of earthquake records, and the Longmenshan fault system (LFS) is a famous earthquake zone. We believed that the LFS could be divided into three seismogenic zones (north, central, and south zones) based on the geological structures and the earthquake catalog. We applied the Bayesian probability method using extreme-value distribution of earthquake occurrences to estimate the seismic hazard in the LFS. The seismic moment, slip rate, earthquake recurrence rate, and magnitude were considered as the basic parameters for computing the Bayesian prior estimates of the seismicity. These estimates were then updated in terms of Bayes’ theorem and historical estimates of seismicity in the LFS. Generally speaking, the north zone seemingly is quite peaceful compared with the central and south zones. The central zone is the most dangerous; however, the periodicity of earthquake occurrences for M s = 8.0 is quite long (1,250 to 5,000 years). The selection of upper bound probable magnitude influences the result, and the upper bound magnitude of the south zone maybe 7.5. We obtained the empirical relationship of magnitude conversion for M s and ML, the values of the magnitude of completeness Mc (3.5), and the Gutenberg–Richter b value before applying the Bayesian extreme-value distribution of earthquake occurrences method.