The Physics of Earthquakes: Integrating Theory and Observations

Bruce Shaw

Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University


Equations of motion which can reproduce the rich suite of earthquake behaviors remains a central unsolved problem in Earth science and classical mechanics. Two features of the observations suggest that despite the challenges, it may be a solvable problem. First, there are commonalities across earthquakes which transcend their geographical setting, so that earthquakes in vastly different locations and thus rocks and histories look remarkably similar. Second, there is a huge variety of observables, from magnitude distributions, to aftershock productivity, spectral content of radiated energy, and spatial correlations of occurrence, to name a few. From a dynamical systems point of view, each of these observables provides a different projection of the high dimensional attractor the system evolves over. Taken together, they provide multiplicative constraints, making any theory strongly testable. We discuss a physics approach to the problem, beginning from the simplest models, grounded in the material context of the system, and tied closely with the observations. We examine, as a starting point, the deterministically chaotic complex sequences of events produced by elastodynamics with a frictional boundary instability.

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