[CEUS-earthquake-hazards] alternative hazard maps

[Seth Stein]

Some readers may be interested in a preprint

http://www.earth.northwestern.edu/people/seth/Texts/timedep.pdf

in which we
calculate alternative seismic hazard maps for the New Madrid Seismic Zone
and Charleston, South Carolina areas. To date, published maps for
the central and eastern U.S. are done assuming that the large 
earthquakes are described by a time-independent Poisson process, such 
that a future earthquake is equally likely immediately after the past 
one and much later.  An alternative is to use time-dependent models in 
which the probability is small shortly after the past one, and then 
increases with time. For times since the previous earthquake less than 
about 2/3 of the assumed recurrence interval, time-dependent models 
predict lower probabilities.  Such models  predict significantly lower 
earthquake probabilities and hazards for Charleston and New Madrid that
are "early" in their cycles.  The differences between
the time-independent and time-dependent hazard maps bear out
the point that estimating seismic hazard in intraplate areas
is a very uncertain enterprise.


-- 
Seth Stein
William Deering Professor
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
1850 Campus Drive
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208
(847) 491-5265 FAX: (847) 491-8060 E-MAIL: seth at earth.northwestern.edu
http://www.earth.northwestern.edu/people/seth