Why Do Geological Phenomena Exhibit a Power Law Distribution?

[ralden]

Many natural hazards or geological phenomena satisfy power-law (fractal) frequency-size statistics to a good approximation for medium and large events. Examples include earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, landslides, and forest fires. So my questions is that, Why geological phenomena exhibit a power law distribution, and how special is that kind of statistical distribution?

 

[billiards]

Good question.

I'm not sure why the power law distribution is so ubiquitous throughout the Earth sciences, and indeed it is ubiquitous throughout nature, and even in manmade systems such as the stock market.

Why it is there I do not know. But it is not special, it is quite common.