Statistics between mainshocks and foreshocks in Italy and Southern California

The most used and accepted models for daily forecasts are based on short-term space and time earthquake clustering for occurrence rates and on the Gutenberg-Richter law for the frequency-magnitude. These models have been demonstrated to produce reliable prospective space-time-magnitude forecasts during an aftershock sequence, but their skill in forecasting mainshocks is still under discussion. This paper studies the foreshock statistics of the Italian and Californian seismicity in two ways: i) we compare the foreshock activity observed in real seismic catalogs and in synthetic catalogs derived from a pure Epidemic-Type Aftershock Sequence (ETAS) model; ii) we analyze the triggering capability of earthquakes using different ETAS parameterizations, in order to check whether large events are triggered in the same way as regular earthquakes. The results indicate that the foreshock activity observed in the real catalogs is compatible with what is expected by the ETAS model. Moreover, we find that the empirical foreshock rates have an intrinsic variability due to limited sampling that may explain most of the differences found so far in different seismic catalogs. Copyright © 2011 by the American Geophysical Union.