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We estimate seismological fracture energies from two subsets of events selected from the seismic sequences of L'Aquila (2009), and Northridge (1994): 57 and 16 selected events, respectively, including the main shocks. Following Abercrombie and Rice (Geophys J Int 162: 406-424, ), we postulate that fracture energy (G) represents the post-failure integral of the dynamic weakening curve, which is described by the evolution of shear traction as a function of slip. Following a direct-wave approach, we compute mainshock-/aftershock-source spectral ratios, and analyze them using the approach proposed by Malagnini et al. (Pure Appl. Geophys., this issue, ) to infer corner frequencies and seismic moment. Our estimates of source parameters (including fracture energies) are based on best-fit grid-searches performed over empirical source spectral ratios. We quantify the source scaling of spectra from small and large earthquakes by using the MDAC formulation of W alter and Taylor (A revised Magnitude and Distance Amplitude Correction (MDAC2) procedure for regional seismic discriminants, ). The source parameters presented in this paper must be considered as point-source estimates representing averages calculated over specific ruptured portions of the fault area. In order to constrain the scaling of fracture energy with coseismic slip, we investigate two different slip-weakening functions to model the shear traction as a function of slip: (i) a power law, as suggested by Abercrombie and Rice (Geophys J Int 162: 406-424, ), and (ii) an exponential decay. Our results show that the exponential decay of stress on the fault allows a good fit between measured and predicted fracture energies, both for the main events and for their aftershocks, regardless of the significant differences in the energy budgets between the large (main) and small earthquakes (aftershocks). Using the power-law slip-weakening function would lead us to a very different situation: in our two investigated sequences, if the aftershock scaling is extrapolated to events with large slips, a power law (a la Abercrombie and Rice) would predict unrealistically large stress drops for large, main earthquakes. We conclude that the exponential stress evolution law has the advantage of avoiding unrealistic stress drops and unbounded fracture energies at large slip values, while still describing the abrupt shear-stress degradation observed in high-velocity laboratory experiments (e.g., Di Toro et al., Fault lubrication during earthquakes, Nature ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the fault parameters of the 2005 Miyagi-Oki (Japan) earthquake using duration variations of teleseismic P-waves. The results show that the earthquake has a thrust-type mechanism and a seismic moment of 4.46 x 1019 Nm. Rupture directivity analysis suggests that the earthquake occurred as a result of a bilateral faulting on the fault plane with a strike of 247°, a dip of 17° and a slip of 125°. The optimal rupture azimuth, measured counterclockwise from the strike on the fault plane, is 170° (or 350°). The rupture length and average source duration are estimated to be 73.4 km and 14.5 sec, respectively. Thus the rupture velocity is 2.53 km sec-1 (~0.57 times the value of S-wave velocity), which is lower than the value for other similarly sized earthquakes. This implies that the 2005 Miyagi-Oki earthquake was probably a slow event. Consequently, there may have been less release of high-frequency seismic energy, leading to lower radiated seismic energy and radiation efficiency (~0.32 - 0.48). In other words, relatively larger fracture energy occurred during earthquake faulting in addition to the heat due to friction. The ratio of the static stress drop to the apparent stress (> 2.0) also suggests that the earthquake can be modeled as a frictional overshoot in a stress model, which implies the transformation of a lower percentage of strain energy into seismic-wave energy during the process of earthquake rupturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]