Although seismic gap theory plays an important role in the med-and long-term earthquake prediction,the potential risk of the non-seismic gap in historical earthquake rupture areas will need to be simultaneously taken into account in the study of med-and long-term earthquake prediction,due to the temporally clustering or non-linear behavior of large earthquake recurrence.In order to explore technical methods which can be based on observational data,and identify historical earthquake rupture zones( including the seismic gap in historical and prehistoric earthquake rupture zones),we select eight historical large earthquake rupture zones with different elapsed times on the mid-north segment of the North-South Seismic Belt to make quantitative analysis on the characteristics of modern seismicity of these zones and preliminarily explore the seismicity method for determining the urgency degree of potential earthquake hazards.The results mainly show that the pvalue,which reflects the attenuation of earthquake sequence,and the a-value,which reflects the seismicity rate,are strongly related to the elapsed time of the latest earthquake in the rupture zone.However,the corresponding relationships in some rupture areas are not clear perhaps due to the complex fault structure and faulting behavior.The b-value,which represents the state of tectonic stress accumulation,does not easily reflect the elapsed time information of different evolution stages.The b-value temporal scanning shows a steady evolution over time in most of the rupture zones,but in the rupture zone of the Wudu M8.0 earthquake of 1879,the b-value shows significant fluctuations with a decreasing trend for 20 years.By comparative analysis,we conclude that the rupture zones of the 1933 M7.5 Maoxian earthquake and the 1976 M7.2 Songpan-Pingwu earthquake are still in the decaying period of earthquake sequences,and thus do not have the background for recurrence of M7.0 earthquakes.The low b-value Maqu segment,which is located at the north margin of the rupture zone of the 842A.D.M7.0 Diebu earthquake,is more dangerous than the Diebu segment.The continuous decline of the b-value in the 1879 M8.0 Wudu earthquake rupture zone may also indicate a new round of seismogenic process.
