| Seismic energy is a broadband measurement that allows one to analyze important characteristics of earthquakes, and the processes associated with them. However, its estimation has many uncertainties that have lead to discrepancies between estimates obtained using different data and techniques. The goals of this work are to reduce the uncertainty of seismic energy estimates; to resolve the discrepancy between regional and teleseismic estimates; and to describe some earthquake characteristics based on improved estimates of seismic energy.; I model the uncertainties in geometrical spreading, radiation pattern, and energy flux, and use a variance-weighting technique to estimate the total seismic energy from various teleseismic stations. I reduce the discrepancy between regional and teleseismic estimates for Mexican subduction events using a stronger teleseismic attenuation and frequency-dependent site-effect corrections. Moreover, I modelled site correction for 49 GSN stations. This reduced the mean value of seismic energy at each station by a factor of ∼1.6 and its uncertainty by ∼4%.; I analyze different aspects of earthquakes using these improved teleseismic estimates of seismic energy. First, I find that the strike-slip events are ∼3.3 and ∼1.7 times more energetic than the reverse and normal events, respectively. Also, I observe no statistically significant scaling of apparent stress with seismic moment. From 70 strike-slip events, I identified some with anomalously large centroid time shift given their seismic moment, and distinguished four ridge-transform events that also had a low apparent stress. These events were classified as slow earthquakes, with little seismic radiation at high frequency. These events suggest a different frictional behavior for this type of fault. I conclude that the appaxent stress in conjunction with the centroid time shift can be used as discriminant for slow earthquakes.; Finally, I analyzed how seismic energy is distributed on the fault using strong ground motion rupture models. I followed Ide's [2002] approach to estimate the energy distribution for the 1984 Morgan Hill, the 1992 Landers, and the 1999 Hector Mine earthquakes. I observe that seismic energy is mainly released at the principal regions of high slip and that it is absorbed at the edges of these regions. |
