Investigating earthquake determinism with a multi-method approach

On average there are about 140,000 detectable earthquakes a year, of which around 15 grow to be magnitude 7 or greater. After an earthquake, we can simply calculate this final magnitude, but it is unclear
if an earthquake `knows' its final magnitude before rupture ends. If characteristics of nucleation and early rupture allow us to determine earthquake magnitude, we say nucleation is deterministic (1). In the past, we
have applied many different approaches to understand the extent to which this paradigm is true. However, I have identified a key limitation of existing work on determinism, in that it generally uses a single method
or class of methods on small subsets of earthquakes which are all in similar geographical or tectonic settings. In my DPhil, I will apply a variety of methods to a large dataset spanning magnitudes, mechanisms and
tectonic settings.