{
  "abstract": "Short-term aftershock incompleteness biases Gutenberg-Richter b-value estimates because many small earthquakes remain undetected immediately after large events. Two strategies address this problem. Earthquake replenishment reconstructs missing events to restore a more complete catalog, whereas robust positive-difference estimators infer the b-value directly from incomplete observations. Whether these approaches provide equivalent information on the magnitude distribution remains open. We address this issue using synthetic aftershock sequences generated with the Epidemic-Type Aftershock Sequence (ETAS) model and degraded through a time- and magnitude-dependent incompleteness model. Incomplete catalogs are replenished using AutoBETA, and b is estimated using the standard maximum-likelihood, b-more-positive, and b-more-incomplete estimators. Replenishment reconstructs the overall structure of the missing-event population and substantially improves conventional maximum-likelihood estimates, although small residual biases remain. By contrast, both positive-difference estimators recover the imposed b-value directly from incomplete synthetic catalogs. Applications to the Ridgecrest, Landers, and Hector Mine sequences show that b-more-incomplete is less sensitive to replenishment than b-more-positive. Ten independent replenishment seeds indicate that seedto-seed variability is small relative to differences among estimators. Replenishment and robust b-value estimation therefore address different aspects of catalog incompleteness: replenishment provides a more complete aftershock representation, whereas robust estimators are preferable when accurate b-value estimation is the primary objective.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.13380",
  "author_total": 2,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Herbian Hokky Prabowo"
    },
    {
      "name": "Giuseppe Petrillo"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/c07h31y6b6t4f.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.13380",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "c07h31y6b6t4f",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.13380",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "LicenseRef-arXiv-nonexclusive-1.0",
  "licence_label": "arXiv licence",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "physics.data-an"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "physics.geo-ph"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "1908|earthquake and tectonic studies"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7221545874",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.13380",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-09",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/c07h31y6b6t4f.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:28:36Z",
      "native_id": "2610.13380",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.13380"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "earth",
      "origin": "arxiv:physics.geo-ph",
      "subfield": "geophysics"
    },
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:physics.data-an",
      "subfield": "computational"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Is Earthquake Replenishment Sufficient for Unbiased b-Value Estimation?",
  "title_text": "Is Earthquake Replenishment Sufficient for Unbiased b-Value Estimation?",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:28:36Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/c07h31y6b6t4f",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}