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U.S. Department of Energy
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Source-scaling relations of eastern North American earthquakes. Final report

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:5111806

A scaling relation for eastern North American earthquakes was constructed from measurements of seismic moment and source duration. These measurements were obtained by the waveform modeling of seismic body waves using synthetic seismograms. The resulting scaling relation is quite consistent with a constant stress drop scaling relation and very inconsistent with relations in which stress drop increases with seismic moment. A scaling relation for earthquakes in other continental interiors, derived using the same method, is also quite consistent with constant stress drop scaling. Both the eastern North American events and the events in other continental interiors have median stress drops of approximately 100 bars (measured using the method of Cohn and others (1982), which gives similar results to that of Brune (1970)). Earthquakes in western North America do not fit a single source scaling relation as well as do the eastern North American and other continental interior events. While the stress drops of the western events appear to decrease somewhat with increasing seismic moment, their median stress drop is also approximately 100 bars assuming constant stress drop scaling.

Research Organization:
Woodward-Clyde Consultants, Pasadena, CA (USA)
OSTI ID:
5111806
Report Number(s):
EPRI-NP-4789; ON: TI87920024
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English