Análisis mediante estadística no extensiva del terremoto de Pedernales, Ecuador 2016

Abstract

On April 16, 2016, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake occurred in Ecuador, causing enormous human and material losses, and leaving thousands of people injured and displaced. This seismic event is part of a series of earthquakes in the province of Manabí in the coastal region of Ecuador, where the subduction of the Nazca plate under the South American plate occurs. We propose to study this set of earthquakes from the perspective of non-extensive statistical mechanics using the entropy concept proposed by Tsallis in (Tsallis, 2009). We developed the calculation of the complexity coefficient q for the magnitude of earthquakes, a parameter that quantifies the value of complexity of a system, and applied it to the earthquake catalog in the high seismic coupling zone of Manabí-Esmeraldas in the subduction zone of Ecuador. The results show a relationship between changes in the complexity coefficient q over time and the occurrence of earthquakes of great magnitude M>5. The earthquake of April 16, 2016, is accompanied by a previous increase in the value of q, which coincides with other previous studies such as in (Papadakis et al., 2015).