Spatio-temporal seismicity in an elastic block lattice model

An elastic block lattice model is proposed to simulate the spatio-temporal seismicity and stress patterns in the Earth's brittle crust. The famous Gut enberg-Richter magnitude-frequency law in seismology is reproduced. The syn thetic catalogs generated by this model are analyzed by using a linked stre ss release model, which incorporates the stress transfer and spatial intera ctions. The results highlight the triggering mechanism of earthquake occurr ence and the evidence that the crust may lie in a near-critical or self-org anized critical state due to the long-range spatial interaction of elastic stress. The spatio-temporal complexity of seismicity is closely related to both nonlinear dynamics of faults and heterogeneities in a seismic region.