Source scaling of intermediate-depth Vrancea earthquakes.

Source scaling properties are studied for the intermediate-depth seismic nest in the Vrancea region, Romania, which has been the source of many destructive earthquakes. We investigate spectral and time-domain scaling properties using wide-band digital records from 16 earth- quakes (3.7 ≤ MW ≤ 7.4). All processing variants (P or S waves, spectral or time domain, etc.) produceconsistentresults.Theobservedcorner-frequencyversusMW trendgenerallyfollows the constant-stress-drop model, with typical stress-drop values of 1–10 MPa. This kind of scaling, seen over the entire magnitude range analysed, is similar to that observed for shallow events. However, this trend seems to be violated for the largest earthquakes (MW > 6.5). They show a clear tendency for higher static stress drops than shallow events, and for magnitudes above 7, average stress drops exceeding 10 MPa may be expected. These results are of partic- ular significance for seismic hazard studies, and specifically for the estimation of future strong motions.