Is Earthquake Triggering Driven by Small Earthquakes?

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  • 14 October 2002
Abstract
Using a catalog of seismicity for Southern California, we measure how the number of triggered earthquakes increases with the earthquake magnitude. The trade-off between this scaling and the distribution of earthquake magnitudes controls the relative role of small compared to large earthquakes. We show that seismicity triggering is driven by the smallest earthquakes, which trigger fewer aftershocks than larger earthquakes, but which are much more numerous. We propose that the non-trivial scaling of the number of aftershocks emerges from the fractal spatial distribution of aftershocks.

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