2002/10/31 by Agnès Helmstetter, Agnes Helmstetter, Didier Sornette
Computer Science · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Aftershock #Earthquake Detection and Analysis #Earthquake prediction #Foreshock #Geology #Induced seismicity #Magnitude (astronomy) #Physics #Seismology #Seismology and Earthquake Studies #cond-mat.stat-mech #earthquake and tectonic studies #physics.geo-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1029/2003jb002409
published as J. Geophys. Res. (Solid Earth) 108 (B10), 2457 10.1029/2003JB002409 01 (2003) · 20 pages, 6 figures, minor revision, in press in J. Geophys. Res
arxiv created 2003/08/18 · openalex publication_date 2003/09/30 · arxiv updated 2015/06/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The observation of foreshocks preceding large earthquakes and the suggestion that foreshocks have specific properties that may be used to distinguish them from other earthquakes have raised the hope that large earthquakes may be predictable. Among proposed anomalous properties are the larger proportion than normal of large versus small foreshocks, the power law acceleration of seismicity rate as a function of time to the mainshock, and the spatial migration of foreshocks toward the mainshock when averaging over many sequences. Using southern California seismicity, we show that these properties and others arise naturally from the simple model that any earthquake may trigger other earthquakes, without arbitrary distinction between foreshocks, aftershocks, and mainshocks. We find that foreshock precursory properties are independent of the mainshock size. This implies that earthquakes (large or small) are predictable to the same degree as seismicity rate is predictable from past seismicity by taking into account cascades of triggering. The cascades of triggering give rise naturally to long‐range and long‐time interactions, which can explain the observations of correlations in seismicity over surprisingly large length scales.