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Fluctuation Dynamics of Radon in Groundwater Prior to the Gansu Earthquake, China (22 July 2013: Ms = 6.6): Investigation with DFA and MFDFA Methods

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Abstract

The present study reports measurements of radon in groundwater conducted in China between January and December 2013. During the measurement period, a great Ms = 6.6 earthquake occurred in Gansu Province, China. The paper analyses data derived from three nearby stations via monofractal and multifractal detrended fluctuations analysis and explores whether pre-earthquake fractal and long-memory trends exist in the time series. Several critical epochs with characteristic pre-seismic long-lasting fractal patterns are identified in segmented parts of the series. In the whole data series, the fluctuation function, scaling exponent and generalised Hurst exponent depend on the fractal scales, which indicates multifractality. The multifractal spectrum of the raw, shuffled and truncated series showed a significant increase in the degree of fluctuation that can be explained as a pre-earthquake indicator attributable to the Gansu earthquake due to its very large magnitude.

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(Modified from Zheng et al., 2014)

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge two anonymous reviewers for the improvement of the manuscript by their constructive remarks. Gratitude is also extended to the Editor-in-Chief for his editorial assistance. The authors would like to thank the China Earthquake Network Centre for providing the radon data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Geo-Detection, Ministry of Education, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, China

    Aftab Alam & Nanping Wang

  2. School of Geophysics and Information Technology, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, China

    Aftab Alam & Nanping Wang

  3. Department of Informatics and Computer Engineering, University of West Attica, Agiou Spyridonos, 122 43, Aigaleo, Attica, Greece

    Ermioni Petraki & Panayiotis H. Yannakopoulos

  4. China Earthquake Networks Centre, Beijing, China

    Fuqiong Huang

  5. Centre for Earthquake Studies, National Centre for Physics, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Aftab Alam, Adnan Barkat & Muhammad Ali Shah

  6. Department of Industrial Design and Production Engineering, University of West Attica, Petrou Ralli, Thivon 250, 122 44, Aigaleo, Greece

    Demetrios Cantzos, Georgios Priniotakis, Michail Papoutsidakis & Dimitrios Nikolopoulos

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  1. Aftab Alam
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Alam, A., Wang, N., Petraki, E. et al. Fluctuation Dynamics of Radon in Groundwater Prior to the Gansu Earthquake, China (22 July 2013: Ms = 6.6): Investigation with DFA and MFDFA Methods. Pure Appl. Geophys. 178, 3375–3395 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-021-02818-8

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