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The great earthquake model of K. Ito’s
K. Ito wrote to the author that since the original idea was due to Burridge and Knopoff, it was not appropriate to call the model as `Ito’s model.’ The model due to R. Burridge, and L. Knopoff, ``Model and theoretical seismicity,’’ Bull. Seis. Soc. Amer. 57 , 341 (1967) is illustrated as follows:
the model can be described as
Therefore, the models have some common features, but the author does not find it inappropriate to call the model `the Ito model.’
Periodic earthquakes in New Zealand
The model here implies a periodic occurrence of earthquakes, if there is no coupling between the `oscillators.’ There is indeed such an example!
K. R. Kelvin R. Berryman et al.
Major Earthquakes Occur Regularly on an Isolated Plate Boundary Fault
Science 336 1690 (2012).
A fault-proximal major earthquake record spanning 8000 years on the strike-slip Alpine Fault in New Zealand. Cyclic stratigraphy at Hokuri Creek suggests that the fault ruptured to the surface 24 times, and event ages yield a 0.33 coefficient of variation in recurrence interval (the period is 329 ¥pm 68 years). We associate this near-regular earthquake recurrence with a geometrically simple strike-slip fault, with high slip rate, accommodating a high proportion of plate boundary motion that works in isolation from other faults.
