CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION
The earthquakes have been interest of the people throughout the world from early time. It
has attracted large attention due to huge loss in the recent years. Recently a great
earthquake hit the Andaman-Sumatra subduction zone on December 26,2004 at 6:30 a.m.
(Indian Standard Time, IST) of magnitude 9.0 (M w). This mega thrust earthquake
originated approximately 160 km west of northern Sumatra. This earthquake is one of the
four largest earthquakes since 1900.The other three are the Mw= 9.6,1960 Chilean, the
Mw = 9.4 1964 Alaska, and the 1957 earthquake in the Andreanof Island of Alaska
earthquakes and have occurred more than thirty years ago (Stein and Okal, 2005; Tsai et
al., 2005). This earthquake generated the tsunami which killed more than 2,20000
persons. There was loss of property of more than several billion US dollar. The
earthquake occurred in a complex tectonic region, along the boundaries of the IndoAustralian and Eurasian plates, the Sunda and Burma micro plates and the Andaman subplate (Figure 1.1). It ruptured the subduction zone mega thrust plate boundary on the
Sunda Trench. This earthquake has been given many names, and will be referred here as
the Mw 9.0 North Sumatra earthquake of 2004. Its epicenter (latitude 3.316 N, longitude
95.854 E, USGS), at a depth of 30 km, was on a segment of the AndamanSunda
subduction zone that is near the eastern end of the convergent boundary between the
Indian and Australian plate. In the vicinity of the epicenter, the Indian and Australian,
both plates are moving approximately 6 cm. per year to the northeast relative to the
overriding Burmese plate. The fault ruptured propagated northward from the epicenter
along approximately 1300 km long, 150 km wide section of the Andaman-Sumatra
subduction zone, which is the interface between the subducting Indian plate and
overriding Burmese plate. The surface expression of this subduction zone is known as the
Sunda Trench. The Andaman Islands, Nicobar Islands and the northern part of Sumatra,
which all lie on the Burmese plate; mark the boundary between the Bay of Bengal to the
west and the Andaman sea to the east.
Magnitude of an earthquake is the most commonly used parameter of earthquake size.
Gutenberg and Richter have provided a simplest earthquake reoccurrence or magnitude
frequency relation as, log10N = a-bM where N is the number of earthquakes in the group
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having magnitudes larger than M, a and b are constants. The estimated coefficient b is
known as the b-value, varies mostly from 0.5 to 1.5, depending on the tectonics of the
region. The variability of b-values in different regions may be related to structural
heterogeneity and stress distribution in space. (Bhattacharya et al, 2002). The b-value
represents a statistical measurement of the relative abundance of large and small
earthquakes in the group. A higher b-value means that a smaller fraction of the total
earthquakes occur at the higher magnitudes, whereas a lower b-value implies a larger
fraction occur at higher magnitudes. The higher levels of motion at a site are dominated
by occurrences of the larger earthquakes. If b is large, large earthquakes are relatively
rare. It has been observed that the b-value shows systemic variations in the period
preceding a major earthquake. (Ma, 1978;Smith, 1981;Majumdar & Biswas, 1999) Hence
it is the most investigated equation in seismology, observationally as well as theoretically.
(Bhattacharya et al, 2002).
Fractal properties of seismicity, a stochastic self- similar structure in time and space
distribution of earthquakes, can be measured by fractal dimension which is introduced as
a sophisticated statistical tool to quantify dimensional distribution of seismicity, its
randomness and clusterisation (Hirata, 1989; Kagan and Knopoff, 1980,1981; Ogata,
1988). Hirata (1989) reported temporal variations in fractal dimension to quantify the
seismic process. Shimazaki and Nagahama (1995) studied the Japan region and correlated
the active fault systems with the fractal dimension. Time variations of spatial fractal
dimension also suggest that there may be a positive correlation between b-value and
fractal dimension (Ouchi & Uekawa, 1986; Main, 1991). Therefore it is important to
study the frequency-magnitude relation and fractal dimension of seismicity of a
tectonically active region.
The Andaman-Sumatra region, situated in the northeast Indian Ocean region is
one of the most tectonically active regions of the world. DAmico et al (2005) have
calculated b-value, p-value and the cumulative energy and the fractal dimension D0 and
D2 to high light the clustering of events using the data for the time period 1973 to 2004
for Sumatra area. Jiang et al (2005) examined the pre-shock cumulative moment release
in different segment of Sumatra region, however Bilham et al (2005) studied the rupture
process in this region. No systematic studies have been done on b-value and fractal

Fig.1.1: Tectonic map of the study region (Andaman arc-Sunda trench) along with free
air map. CMT solutions for few events are also shown in the fig. (taken from Das et al
2006) Smallest black dot represents earthquake before 26th December 2004. White star
represents earthquake after the great earthquake of 26th December 2004
WAF= West Andaman Fault
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dimension in Andaman-Sumatra region to understand their tectonic implication and

correlation.
OBJECTIVE OF THE PRESENT WORK:
The available data for the period 1973 to Jan 30,2006 are systematically analyzed to
estimate the b-value and fractal dimension in different tectonic block of the region. The
whole region is also mapped in more detail to visualize the spatial variation of the bvalue, fractal dimension and constant a.