This catalogue is the extended version of “The European-Mediterranean Earthquake Catalogue (EMEC) for the last millennium” (Grünthal and Wahlstrom, 2012, 2012a). It is an earthquake catalogue for tectonic events in the broader European Mediterranean area. It reached from the Azores (Mid-Atlantic Ridge) in the west, to Africa north of the Sahara in the south, the Arctic Sea in the north, and the regions of Levant, eastern Turkey, and the Caucasus in the west. This areal coverage gave the name to the catalogue: EMEC—The European-Mediterranean Earthquake Catalogue.
It extends the previous version (Grünsthal and Wahlström, 2012), by the years 2007 to 2021 and thus contains tectonic events for the period AD 1000 to 2021 with a uniform magnitude Mw from the threshold of 3.5. The dataset contains 71271 entries.
This catalogue is the extended version of “The European-Mediterranean Earthquake Catalogue (EMEC) for the last millennium” (Grünthal and Wahlstrom, 2012, 2012).
It is an earthquake catalogue for tectonic events in the area of European Mediterranean, including the Mid-Atlantic ridge down to the Azores, extends in the south to Africa north of the Sahara, in the north to the Arctic Sea, and in the east to the Levant, eastern Turkey, and the Caucasus. This areal coverage gave the name to the catalogue: EMEC—The European-Mediterranea Earthquake Catalogue.
It extends the previous version by the years 2007 to 2021 and thus contains tectonic events for the period AD 1000 to 2021 with a uniform magnitude Mw from the threshold of 3.5. The dataset contains 61140 entries.
Version History11 Sep 2019: Release of Version 1.1 with the following changes: (1) new licence: CC BY SA 4.0, modification of the title: removal of file name and version); (2) addition of ORIDs when available; (3) actualisation of affiliations for some authors The metadata of the first version 1.0 is available in the download folder.. Data and file names remain unchanged.Area Source model for Central AsiaThe area sources for Central Asia within the EMCA model are defined by mainly considering the pattern of crustal seismicity down to 50 km depth. Although tectonic and geological information, such as the position and strike distribution of known faults, have also been taken into account when available. Large area sources (see, for example source_id 1, 2, 5, 45 and 52, source ids are identified by parameter “source_id” in the related shapefile) are defined where the seismicity is scarce and there are no tectonic or geological features that would justify a further subdivision. Smaller area sources (e.g., source_id values 36 and 53) have been designed where the seismicity can be assigned to known fault zones.In order to obtain a robust estimation of the necessary parameters for PSHA derived by the statistical analysis of the seismicity, due to the scarcity of data in some of the areas covered by the model, super zones are introduced. These super zones are defined by combining area sources based on similarities in their tectonic regime, and taking into account local expert’s judgments. The super zones are used to estimate: (1) the completeness time of the earthquake catalogue, (2) the depth distribution of seismicity, (3) the tectonic regime through focal mechanisms analysis, (4) the maximum magnitude and (5) the b values via the GR relationship.The earthquake catalogue for focal mechanism is extracted from the Harvard Global Centroid Moment Tensor Catalog (Ekström and Nettles, 2013). For the focal mechanism classification, the Boore et al. (1997) convention is used. This means that an event is considered to be strike-slip if the absolute value of the rake angle is <=30 or >=150 degrees, normal if the rake angle is <-30 or >-150 and reverse (thrust) if the rake angle is >30 or <150 degrees. The distribution of source mechanisms and their weights are estimated for the super zones.For area sources, the maximum magnitude is usually taken from the historical seismicity, but due to some uncertainties in the magnitudes of the largest events, the opinions of the local experts are also included in assigning the maximum magnitude to each super zone. Super zones 2 and 3, which belongs to stable regions, are each assigned a maximum magnitude of 6, after Mooney et al. (2012), which concludes after analyses and observation of modern datasets that at least an event of magnitude 6 can occur anywhere in the world. For hazard calculations, each area source is assigned the maximum magnitude of their respective super zone.For processing the GR parameters (a and b values) for the area sources, the completeness analysis results estimated for the super zones are assigned to the respective smaller area sources. If the individual area source has at least 20 events, the GR parameters are then estimated for the area source. Otherwise, the b value is adopted from the respective super zone to which the smaller area source belongs, and the a value is estimated based on the Weichert (1980) method. This ensures the stability in the b value as well as the variation of activity rate for different sources.The hypocentral depth distribution is estimated from the seismicity inside each super zone. The depth distribution is considered for maximum up to three values. Based on the number of events, the weights are assigned to each distribution. These depth distributions, along with corresponding weights, are further assigned to the area sources within the same super zones.
Version History11 Sep 2019: Release of Version 1.1 with the following changes: (1) new licence: CC BY SA 4.0, modification of the title: removal of file name and version); (2) addition of ORIDs when available. The metadata of the first version 1.0 is available in the download folder.. Data and file names remain unchanged.The EMCA (Earthquake Model Central Asia) catalogue (Mikhailova et al., 2015) includes information for 33620 earthquakes that occurred in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan). The catalogue provides for each event the estimated magnitude in terms of MLH (surface wave magnitude) scale, widely used in former USSR countries.MLH magnitudes range from 1.5 to 8.3. Although the catalogue spans the period from 2000 BC to 2009 AD, most of the entries (i.e. 33378) describe earthquakes that occurred after 1900. The catalogue includes the standard parametric information required for seismic hazard studies (i.e., time, location and magnitude values). The catalogue has been composed by integrating different sources (using different magnitude scales) and harmonised in terms of MLH scale. The MLH magnitude is determined from the horizontal component of surface waves (Rautian and Khalturin, 1994) and is reported in most of the seismic bulletins issued by seismological observatories in Central Asia. For the instrumental period MLH magnitude was estimated, when not directly measured, either from body wave magnitude (Mb), the energy class (K) or Mpva (regional magnitude by body waves determined by P-wave recorded by short-period instruments) using empirical regression analyses. The following relationships were used to estimate MLH (see Mikhailova, internal EMCA report, 2014):(1) MLH=0.47 K-1.15(2) MLH=1.34 Mb-1.89(3) MLH=1.14 Mpva-1.45When multiple scales were available for the same earthquake, priority was given to the conversion from K class. For the historical period, the MLH values were obtained from macroseismic information (Kondorskaya and Ulomov, 1996).