Disaster history of Gümüşhane and its vicinity and a statistical study on the future earthquake potential

In the scope of this study, disaster history of Gümüşhane was investigated and a statistical evaluation on the future earthquake potential was made by analyzing the region-time-magnitude behaviors of earthquake occurrences in and around Gümüşhane. For this purpose, the most frequently preferred size-scaling parameters such as completeness magnitude Mc-value, seismotectonic b-value, fractal dimension Dc-value, standard normal deviate Z-value, GENAS modelling, annual probabilities and recurrence periods of earthquakes were used. Earthquake catalog is homogeneous for duration magnitude, Md, and contains 2902 earthquakes with magnitude 1.0≤Md≤6.5 between the years 1970 and 2018. b-value was calculated as 1.02±0.02 by using Mc=2.8 and this value shows that seismicity in and Gümüşhane is well represented with a value typically close to 1.0. Dc-value was computed as 1.57±0.03 with and this result means that earthquake activity is more clustered at larger scales or in smaller areas in Gümüşhane and vicinity. Annual probabilities and recurrence periods of earthquakes show that Gümüşhane has not an important earthquake potential for the strong earthquake occurrences in the short and intermediate terms. However, Kelkit and Köse districts in which small b-values were observed may have a possible earthquake potential in the next. GENAS results and Z-value analyses revealed that there are not significant changes in seismicity rates at the beginning of 2018. Therefore, earthquake hazard is low and earthquake risk is minor in Gümüşhane province of Turkey. Finally, these types of statistical evaluations made on region-time magnitude distributions of earthquake occurrences may supply a significant perspective in the detecting of the next earthquake potential.