Faulting Style and b-Value: A Global Perspective

Abstract

The b-value in the frequency-magnitude relation provides significant information to understand seismicity, seismotectonics, and seismic hazard analysis. In this study, we investigated the relation between the b-value and faulting style on a global scale. The used data were extracted from the Global Centroid Moment Tensor (GCMT) catalog. The least square fit and maximum likelihood methods were used to calculate the b-value. The obtained results show that thrust, strike-slip and normal-faulting earthquakes, occur in regions of low, intermediate, and high b-values, respectively. Our results are in good agreement with the previous works, and we found that the study scale does not affect the hypothesis of a general relationship between faulting style and the b-values (bnormal > bstrike-slip > breverse).