Caracterización multifractal temporal de la sismicidad de la Cordillera Bética

Abstract

From the point of view of seismotectonics, the Betic Cordillera is one of the most active areas of the Iberian Peninsula with historical damaging earthquakes in 1829 and 1884 in Torrevieja (Alicante) and Arenas del Rey (Granada), respectively. In this work, a multifractal analysis of the Betic Cordillera seismicity is presented. For this purpose, we have considered the temporal variation of seismicity taking into account running temporal windows. In each of them, the fractal spectral and b-values have been evaluated. The results show that the evolution of the seismicity set presents monofractal or multifractal characteristics. From the temporal evolution of fractal dimensions and b values we found a good correlation between D2 and b Gutenber-Richter parameter. This correlation between the fractal dimension D2 and the b parameter shows similar results to those obtained in other regions by several authors. Positive and negative correlations where found. In view of the quality of the obtained data fitting, it is interesting, in seismicity multifractal studies, to use enough number of data, although this implies to include earthquake of small magnitude. To avoid uncomplete data sets we must be use up-to-data catalogues. In spite of the short period used, the obtained results show interesting seismotectonic characteristics of the study area.