Parameters of the Seismic Regime of the Eastern Sector of the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation

Abstract

This work constructs a seismic regime model for the eastern sector of the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation (AZRF) based on a newly developed, comprehensive integral earthquake catalog for the region, using a uniform magnitude scale from 1980 to 2020. The model parameters are calculated using a novel high-contrast mean-position method, where values are determined within large-radius circles but are assigned to the mean position of epicenters. A quantitative verification method, the L-test, based on the likelihood function, demonstrates that the model aligns well with the initial data. The magnitude–frequency distribution reconstructed from the model corresponds well with observations, both in terms of slope and the number of earthquakes. The epicenters of the largest earthquakes (M ≥ 6) from both the 1982–2020 period and the 1900–1981 period, according to the Kondorskaya–Shebalin catalog, are located in areas with high expected recurrence of such earthquakes as calculated by the model.