Seismicity of Hawaii

Abstract

One aspect of the seismicity of Hawaii is investigated by attempting to answer two questions: (1) the possibility of occurrence of major earthquakes in Hawaii, and (2) the probability of occurrence. The first question was answered when a study of the distribution of intensity of the Hawaiian earthquake of 1868 indicated that the earthquake had a magnitude between 714and734. An answer to the second question was approached by studying the occurrence-magnitude relation log N = A − bM for earthquakes of magnitudes 2.5 to 4.9 during a period of 314 years. Extrapolation from the results suggests that major earthquakes may be expected in Hawaii as often as in other seismically active areas. A study of strain release showed that the pattern in Hawaii is consistent with that worldwide.

Geological Survey research 1967

“…A leastsquare fitting of the data to the equation, log N=A-bm (Richter, 1958), gives the values A=3.44 and b=0.98. The value of b is very close to values obtained by others for earthquakes on Hawaii (Furumoto, 1965;Koyanagi and others, 1966).…”