Power Laws Governing Historical Earthquakes in the Apennine Chain (Southern Italy)

Abstract

Rank-ordering analysis is applied to the intertimes between seismic events recorded in the Apennine belt between 40–42° N and 14–16° E from the 15th century onwards. It shows a power law capable of governing the intertimes between 1529 and 368 months and another power law which approximates a random simulation, for the intertimes shorter than 368 months. Only the first power law allows the computation of the return period of major events. Earthquakes with the same energy that are aligned according to different power laws imply the presence of two different populations, indicating, in turn, that the physics of seismic phenomena in the region examined is not straightforward, that the stress is probably not unidirectional and that it acts on a non-isotropic medium. The most probable estimated intertime value for the next event is found to be equal to 60 ± 20 years.