freq.magnitude {ssEDA}R Documentation

Frequency Magnitude Plot

Description

Frequency-magnitude plot of the selected events. That is, for a given magnitude m (x axis), the log10 of the proportion of events with magnitude greater than m is given on the y axis. The slope is commonly referred to as the b-value.

Usage

freq.magnitude(events, delta=0.1, bvalue=NA, estimate="ml", plot=TRUE)

Arguments

events defines the events to be plotted. It is an object of class "subset", generally created by subsetcircle, subsetpolygon, subsetrect or subsetsphere.
delta the interval width between points on the graph. Note that the limits of magnitudes plotted (x axis) are determined by minmag and maxmag in the object events. Hence, maxmag-minmag must be a multiple of delta.
bvalue default is NA, in which case a least squares regression line is fitted through the points. If not NA, a line with the given slope is plotted.
estimate takes the values "ml" (default) or "ls", meaning maximum likelihood or least squares respectively. It determines the estimation method used for the b-value. In the case of least squares, the intercept parameter is estimated, whereas in the case of maximum likelihood the log of the cumulative proportion is set to zero at the minimum magnitude.
plot logical, default is TRUE. Determines whether the frequency magnitude distribution is plotted.

Value

The estimated b-value is returned if the function call is assigned to an object, otherwise NULL.

See Also

depth.hist, freq.cusum, magnitude.cusum, magnitude.time, epicentres, threeD, timeplot, multigraph

Examples

#    This example requires the NZ catalogue

require(ssNZ)

b <- subsetrect(NZ, minday=julian(1,1,1964), maxday=julian(1,1,1993), 
                mindepth=40, maxdepth=120, minmag=4)

freq.magnitude(b)

[Package ssEDA version 2.2-1 Index]