Author(s)

Giulio Riga¹, Paolo Balocchi²

¹Geologist, Independent Researcher, Lamezia Terme, Italy.
²Geologist, Independent Researcher, Modena, Italy.

Branching structures can provide early information on earthquakes’ preparation process, trigger stage, different breaking patterns that can occur before strong earthquakes and hazard levels reached in the area to be analyzed. In this study, we aim to understand the earthquakes long-range interactions which constitute the nodes of higher order seismic rods in the upper branching structure, and the hazard level reached in each developmental stage as well as to provide a warning time frame for the most energetic seismic events and a sound method to obtain information on the epicentral area. To this end, we have analyzed several branching structures by using both local and global seismicity. The analysis of different branching structures both on global and local scale highlights long-range interactions between the most energetic earthquakes and their triggering by smaller shocks, thus suggesting that the triggering can occur few minutes to decades before the earthquake, depending on a seismic sequence’s development speed and its structure.

Branching Structure, Earthquake, Microsequence, Hierarchization, Foreshock, Hazard

Riga, G. and Balocchi, P. (2016) Seismic Sequences’ Branching Structures: Long-Range Interactions and Hazard Levels. Open Journal of Earthquake Research, 5, 189-205. doi: 10.4236/ojer.2016.54016.