Earthquake records vary significantly in their ability to detect small seismic events

Nature · Published 21 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Researchers mapping earthquake catalogs in Alaska, Japan, and the western United States found that the ability to detect small tremors is highly inconsistent. They discovered that the minimum magnitude at which earthquakes are reliably recorded, known as the magnitude of completeness, fluctuates sharply depending on the geographic location.

The study found that offshore areas typically have a higher magnitude threshold than onshore regions, and even on land, the threshold can shift by an entire order of magnitude over distances of less than 50 km. This variability is important because ignoring these shifts can lead to incorrect assumptions about how earthquake patterns scale.

The researchers estimated these thresholds by analyzing how closely earthquake frequencies matched a power law model across a 10 km grid. However, the method may be complicated by non-earthquake events, such as explosions or volcanic activity, which do not follow standard scaling patterns.

Why it matters: Accurate earthquake studies must account for the fact that our ability to detect small tremors changes drastically with location.

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