Updated determination of stress parameters for nine well-recorded earthquakes in eastern North America

Abstract

Stress parameters (Δ σ ) are determined for nine relatively well-recorded earthquakes in eastern North America for ten attenuation models. This is an update of a previous study by Boore et al. (2010). New to this paper are observations from the 2010 Val des Bois earthquake, additional observations for the 1988 Saguenay and 2005 Riviere du Loup earthquakes, and consideration of six attenuation models in addition to the four used in the previous study. As in that study, it is clear that Δ σ depends strongly on the rate of geometrical spreading (as well as other model parameters). The observations necessary to determine conclusively which attenuation model best fits the data are still lacking. At this time, a simple 1/ R model seems to give as good an overall fit to the data as more complex models.