Multifractal Characterization of Seismic Activity in the Provinces of Esmeraldas and Manabí, Ecuador

Abstract

Due to the enormous impact of seismic activity and the need to deepen knowledge of its behavior, this research work carries out an analysis of the multifractal nature of the magnitude, inter-distance and interevent time series of earthquakes that occurred in Ecuador during the years 2011–2017 in the provinces of Manabí and Esmeraldas, two areas with high seismic activity. For this study we use multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA), which allows the detection of multifractality in a non-stationary series as well as in a series of parameters of non-linear characterization. The obtained results revealed that an interevent time series presents a higher degree of multifractality than the two previously mentioned. In addition, the Hurst exponent values were in a non-proportional function to (q), which is a weight value indicating the multifractal behavior of the dynamics of the earthquakes analyzed in this work. Finally, several multifractal parameters were calculated, and as a result all series were skewed to the right. This reveals that small variations in the analyzed series were more dominant than large fluctuations.