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Turkish Journal of Earth Sciences

DOI

10.3906/yer-1511-7

Abstract

Empirical magnitude conversion relationships are one of the important parameters for not only seismological studies but also seismic hazard analysis and development of the attenuation relationships. Particularly, for seismic hazard analysis, conversion of various types of magnitudes to moment magnitude, which is the most reliable and common magnitude scale, is a key requirement. Within this scope, different magnitude conversion equations have been derived by various researchers in the literature. In this study, new empirical magnitude conversion formulas for conversion from mb, ML, Md, and MS to Mw were derived by using a recently established earthquake catalogue. The most important feature of the new relationships is the use of the maximum data with respect to the literature. It is a well-known fact that having a greater number of data increases the sensitivity of the equations derived. Both orthogonal regression (OR) and ordinary least squares (OLS) were used to derive conversion equations, and the results obtained from these two methods were compared. In the derivation, 489 events with magnitudes in Mw scale taken from the Harvard GCMT Catalogue were used. Residual graphs created for both methods showed that the OR method gives better results than OLS for conversion from MMS to Mw. On the other hand, the OLS method showed preferable performance for conversions from mb, ML, and Md to Mw. The equations proposed in this study were also compared with other empirical relations in the literature.

Keywords

Moment magnitude, earthquake catalogue, orthogonal regression, ordinary least squares, empirical relations, magnitude scales

First Page

300

Last Page

310

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