Abstract

Study of Seismicity pattern in the Southern Africa from 1986 to 2009 was undertaken natural earthquakes with body wave magnitude, Mb ? 3.0. The earthquake seismology, quantification, statistics of the region was studied. Statistical analyses such as measured central tendencies and spread, pictorial representations (histogram) and time series (moving average) were employed. The Gutenberg-Richter analyses was carried out and this gave a=5.75 and b=1.23 for the two constants. The result shows that the Southern Africa region which is located in an intraplate earthquake belt is generally characterized by small and minor earthquakes with low spatial spread. The seismic events were found to be irregular. The probability of occurrence of major earthquakes in this region in the nearest future was discovered to be low. However, a large earthquake could take place due to uncertainties associated with earthquake predictions, especially in intraplate regions.

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