The influence of earthquake magnitude on hazard related to induced seismicity

Abstract

An increased focus on seismic hazard related to induced seismicity means that state-of-the-art approaches for earthquake monitoring and hazard estimation associated to tectonic earthquakes are now being applied at smaller and smaller scales. This chapter focuses on a specific issue related to this shift of focus to relatively small earthquakes in close proximity to urban areas. In tectonic earthquake hazard analyses we typically rely on a simple power-law scaling relating earthquake magnitude and recurrence. It is known, however, that for smaller earthquakes, the scaling between different magnitude types is not necessarily linear – meaning that a power law cannot be maintained over all magnitude types. Extrapolation to estimate the recurrence of earthquakes not yet recorded at the study site is therefore non-trivial. For earthquake hazard, the moment magnitude is typically used as input as it is easy to relate to ground motion through empirical equations or simulation approaches. However, for earthquake monitoring, maintaining a complete catalogue including moment magnitude of small events is technically difficult. Instead, a point-measure based magnitude, such as the local magnitude is usually determined. In the following the impact of the non-linear scaling between the magnitude of choice for local monitoring – the local magnitude – and that used for hazard analysis – the moment magnitude – is explored.