The earthquakes aftershock processes of the Tien Shan and its surrounding area

Abstract

The earthquakes and aftershock sequences catalogue of 13 moderate earthquakes occurred in the Tian Shan and the Pamir Mountains from 1983 till 1997 have been examined from the point of view of non-equilibrium thermodynamics using Tsallis statistics and its compliance with Omori-Utsu power-law. It has been shown that the earthquake sequence is the system with memory and long-range correlations. The Tsallis parameter q for the aftershock sequences is larger than the q, calculated for all the earthquake catalogue, which indicates the preservation of increased long-range correlations during the aftershock sequence. Dynamic definition of the parameter q of the four events has demonstrated the sharp increase of the long-range correlations in the target region before the main event and the sharp decrease straight after it followed by return to the average value observed before the mainshock. It has been illustrated that the parameters of the researched aftershock sequences are described by the power dependences and follow the Omori-Utsu law.