A Simple Model to Relate the Elastic Ratio Gamma of a Critically Self-Organized Spring-Block Model with the Age of a Lithospheric Downgoing Plate in a Subduction Zone.

In 1980, Ruff and Kanamori (RK) published an article on seismicity and the subduction zones where they reported that the largest characteristic earthquake (Mw) of a subduction zone is correlated with two geophysical quantities: the rate of convergence between the oceanic and continental plates () and the age of the corresponding subducting oceanic lithosphere (). This proposal was synthetized by using an empirical graph (RK-diagram) that includes the variables Mw, and . We have recently published an article that reports that there are some common characteristics between real seismicity, sandpaper experiments and a critically self-organized spring-block model.