Distribution of empirical recurrence intervals for segment-rupturing earthquakes on active faults of the Chinese mainland

Abstract

For the two main recurrence behaviors of segment-rupturing earthquakes on active faults of the Chinese mainland, this paper establishes corresponding empirical distributions for earthquake recurrence interval. The results show that, for the time-predictable recurrence, the normalized recurrence interval, \(T/\bar T_t \), obeys very well the lognormal distribution: LN (μt=0.00, σt/2=0.152), where, T is an observed recurrence interval, and \(\bar T_t \) is the average recurrence interval that is correlative with the size of the preceding event. For the quasi-periodic recurrence, the normalized recurrence interval, \(T/\bar T\), follows the lognormal distribution: LN (μq=0.00, σqEmphasis>/2=0.242), where, \(\bar T\) is the median of recurrence intervals for various cycles. A statistical test suggests that, there is no significant difference between the latter distribution, built by this paper, and the recurrence interval distribution for the characteristic earthquakes of the Circum-Pacific Plate boundaries (NB model). Accordingly, this paper combines these two distributions into one and obtains a more stable lognormal distribution: LN (μ=0.00, σ2=0.222), for the quasi-periodic recurrence interval.