eprintid: 2095 rev_number: 12 eprint_status: archive userid: 6 dir: disk0/00/00/20/95 datestamp: 2018-06-07 10:03:51 lastmod: 2019-02-06 09:03:18 status_changed: 2018-06-07 10:03:51 type: article metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Zaliapin, Ilya creators_name: Ben-Zion, Yehuda creators_id: zal@unr.edu creators_id: corp_creators: Department of Mathematics and Statistics University of Nevada corp_creators: Department of Earth Sciences University of Southern California Los Angeles title: Discriminating Characteristics of Tectonic and Human‐Induced Seismicity subjects: MP2 subjects: RR subjects: RU1_1 subjects: SG subjects: SMU divisions: EPOS-IP divisions: SHEER-5 full_text_status: none abstract: We analyze statistical features of background and clustered subpopulations of earthquakes in different regions in an effort to distinguish between human-induced and natural seismicity. Analysis of end-member areas known to be dominated by humaninduced earthquakes (The Geyser geothermal field in northern California and TauTona gold mine in South Africa) and regular tectonic activity (the San Jacinto fault zone in southern California and the Coso region, excluding the Coso geothermal field in eastern central California) reveals several distinguishing characteristics. Induced seismicity is shown to have (1) higher rate of background events (both absolute and relative to the total rate), (2) faster temporal offspring decay, (3) higher rate of repeating events, (4) larger proportion of small clusters, and (5) larger spatial separation between parent and offspring, compared to regular tectonic activity. These differences also successfully discriminate seismicity within the Coso and Salton Sea geothermal fields in California before and after the expansion of geothermal production during the 1980s. date: 2016-06 date_type: published publication: Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America volume: 106 number: 3 publisher: Seismological Society of America pagerange: 846-859 id_number: doi:10.1785/0120150211 issn: 0037-1106 official_url: http://doi.org/10.1785/0120150211 access_IS-EPOS: limited software_references: Earthquake_interactions-mainshock_scale owner: Publisher citation: Zaliapin, Ilya and Ben-Zion, Yehuda (2016) Discriminating Characteristics of Tectonic and Human‐Induced Seismicity. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 106 (3). pp. 846-859. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1785/0120150211