IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/jikmxx/v21y2022isupp01ns0219649222400019.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Variation of b-Value of Earthquakes During COVID-19 Lockdowns: Case Studies from the Cascadia Subduction Zone and New Zealand

Author

Listed:
  • Avigyan Chatterjee

    (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA)

  • Arushi Saxena

    (��Department of Geological Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA)

  • Khurram Aslam

    (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA)

  • Aaron Van Alstine

    (��The University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN 38163, USA)

  • Mohammad Shahid Zeb

    (�Government College, Dera Ismail Khan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan)

Abstract

During the COVID-19 outbreak that took place in early 2020, restrictions on human activities were imposed by government-mandated lockdowns and stay-at-home orders. In this study, we analyse the impact of reduced anthropogenic activities on the detection of seismic events. We hypothesise and show that with reduced background noise levels due to the COVID-19 lockdowns, low-magnitude earthquakes are more easily detectable. We investigate the magnitudes of earthquakes recorded at the seismometers before and after COVID-19 lockdowns for two regions — Cascadia Subduction Zone and New Zealand. Gutenberg–Richter law, which gives a relationship between the number of earthquakes and their magnitudes (b-value), was applied in these two areas. Our results point to an increase in detection of smaller-magnitude earthquakes, as observed by an increased b-value during the COVID-19 period compared to those obtained in the pre-COVID time periods. Previous studies have shown that changes in b-value of an area over a sustained period of time affect the short-time probabilistic risk assessment. The variability of b-value also gives useful insights into the prevailing stress state of the region, crustal heterogeneity, pore pressure and tectonic setting of the area.

Suggested Citation

  • Avigyan Chatterjee & Arushi Saxena & Khurram Aslam & Aaron Van Alstine & Mohammad Shahid Zeb, 2022. "The Variation of b-Value of Earthquakes During COVID-19 Lockdowns: Case Studies from the Cascadia Subduction Zone and New Zealand," Journal of Information & Knowledge Management (JIKM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 21(Supp01), pages 1-13, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:jikmxx:v:21:y:2022:i:supp01:n:s0219649222400019
    DOI: 10.1142/S0219649222400019
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219649222400019
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S0219649222400019?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eman Alqahtani & Nourah Janbi & Sanaa Sharaf & Rashid Mehmood, 2022. "Smart Homes and Families to Enable Sustainable Societies: A Data-Driven Approach for Multi-Perspective Parameter Discovery Using BERT Modelling," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(20), pages 1-65, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:jikmxx:v:21:y:2022:i:supp01:n:s0219649222400019. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/jikm/jikm.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.