Landslides, forest fires, and earthquakes: examples of self-organized critical behavior

Donald L Turcotte and Bruce D Malamud

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2004, vol. 340, issue 4, 580-589

Abstract: Per Bak conceived self-organized criticality as an explanation for the behavior of the sandpile model. Subsequently, many cellular automata models were found to exhibit similar behavior. Two examples are the forest-fire and slider-block models. Each of these models can be associated with a serious natural hazard: the sandpile model with landslides, the forest-fire model with actual forest fires, and the slider-block model with earthquakes. We examine the noncumulative frequency–area statistics for each natural hazard, and show that each has a robust power-law (fractal) distribution. We propose an inverse-cascade model as a general explanation for the power-law frequency–area statistics of the three cellular-automata models and their ‘associated’ natural hazards.

Keywords: Self-organized criticality; Forest-fires; Landslides; Earthquakes; Cellular-automata models; Inverse-cascade model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:340:y:2004:i:4:p:580-589

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2004.05.009

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