Nonextensivity in Geological Faults?

Abstract

Geological fault systems, as the San Andreas fault (SAF) in USA, constitute typical examples of self-organizing systems in nature. In this paper, we have considered some geophysical properties of the SAF system to test the viability of the nonextensive models for earthquakes developed in [Phys. Rev. E {\bf 73}, 026102, 2006]. To this end, we have used 6188 earthquakes events ranging in the magnitude interval $2 < m < 8$ that were taken from the Network Earthquake International Center catalogs (NEIC, 2004-2006) and the Bulletin of the International Seismological Centre (ISC, 1964-2003). For values of the Tsallis nonextensive parameter $q \simeq 1.68$, it is shown that the energy distribution function deduced in above reference provides an excellent fit to the NEIC and ISC SAF data.