Dynamical evolution of clustering in complex network of earthquakes

The network approach plays a distinguished role in contemporary science of complex systems/phenomena. Such an approach has been introduced into seismology in a recent work [S. Abe and N. Suzuki, Europhys. Lett. 65, 581 (2004)]. Here, we discuss the dynamical property of the earthquake network constructed in California and report the discovery that the values of the clustering coefficient remain stationary before main shocks, suddenly jump up at the main shocks, and then slowly decay following a power law to become stationary again. Thus, the network approach is found to characterize main shocks in a peculiar manner.