Analysis of the relationship between seismic moment and fault length for large crustal strike‐slip earthquakes between 1977–92

Abstract

We have used an uniform data set to determine the scaling relation between seismic moment M 0 and fault length L for 34 large, crustal, strike‐slip earthquakes in the period 1977–92. The seismic moments used were obtained by the centroid‐moment tensor analysis. The aftershocks of each event were relocated in this study and the fault length estimated from their spatial extent. For large events, we find that in spite of some scatter in the data, the trend of this uniform data set indicates that M 0 ∝ L² . Our data set does not show any obvious change of slope around M 0 ≈ (.6–.8)× 10 20 N m as was seen in a previous non‐uniform data set in Romanowicz [1992].