Seismicity change revealed by ETAS, PI, and Z-value methods: A case study of the 2013 Nantou, Taiwan earthquake

• We examined precursory seismicity change of the March 2013 Nantou earthquake.
• We applied three statistical models to the earthquake data in Taiwan region.
• They comprise the ETAS model, the pattern informatics method, and the Z-value test.
• Seismic quiescence regions were found over broader regions outside the source area.
• It would be due to precursory slip on fault plane of the Nantou event.

On Mar. 27, 2013, a ML6.2 earthquake occurred in the Nantou area of central Taiwan, which caused one death and nearly 90 injured. Two months later, another ML6.3 earthquake struck the same region on June 2, 2013, the epicenter of which is close to the March ML6.2 earthquake. Seismicity is a sensitive indicator of stress rate and inelastic deformation process in crust. Therefore, examination of temporal changes in seismicity is important to understand the preparatory processes of damaging inland earthquakes. In this study, we applied the Epidemic-Type Aftershock-Sequences model (ETAS model) to the earthquake data covering broader Taiwan region, which is maintained by the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) of Taiwan, to investigate precursory temporal changes in seismicity for the ML6.2 Nantou earthquake. We regard the March ML6.2 and June ML6.3 earthquakes as an event sequence and especially focus on temporal changes in seismicity prior to the ML6.2 event. Application of more than one model to an earthquake catalog would be informative in elucidating the relationships between seismicity precursors and the preparatory processes of large earthquakes. Based on this motivation, we further applied two different approaches: the pattern informatics (PI) method and the ZMAP method, which is a gridding technique based on the standard deviate (Z-value) test to the same earthquake data of CWB. As a result, we found that the epicenter of the 2013 ML6.2 Nantou earthquake was surrounded by three main seismic quiescence regions prior to its occurrence. The assumption that this is due to precursory slip (stress drop) on fault plane or its deeper extent of the ML6.2 Nantou earthquake is supported by previous researches based on seismicity data, geodedic data, and numerical simulations using rate- and state-dependent friction laws.