Reply to 'Comment on 'Changes of reporting rates in the southern california earthquake catalog, introduced by a new definition of m_L' by thessa tormann, stefan wiemer, and egill hauksson' by Duncan Carr Agnew

摘要

Monte Carlo magnitude mapping has been proposed as a tool to homogenize earthquake catalogs in time to overcome breaks in homogeneity of reporting. We analyze the uncertainty propagation for the b value due to that transformation and find that the additional error in b is negligibly small in relation to its standard deviation. However, in order to take the arbitrariness out of the proposed simulation, we argue that it has to be repeated a sufficient number of times to be stable, just like any other simulation technique. To illustrate this point, we show the example of crosssectional mapping of the b value along the San Andreas fault near Parkfield, California.