Temporal variations of the fractal properties of seismicity in the western part of the north Anatolian fault zone: possible artifacts due to improvements in station coverage

Abstract

Seismically-active fault zones are complex natural systems exhibiting scale-invariant or fractal correlation between earthquakes in space and time, and a power-law scaling of fault length or earthquake source dimension consistent with the exponent b of the Gutenberg-Richter frequency-magnitude relation. The fractal dimension of seismicity is a measure of the degree of both the heterogeneity of the process (whether fixed or self-generated) and the clustering of seismic activity. Temporal variations of the b-value and the two-point fractal (correlation) dimension D-c have been related to the preparation process for natural earthquakes and rock fracture in the laboratory. These statistical scaling properties of seismicity may therefore have the potential at least to be sensitive short-term predictors of major earthquakes.