An earthquake focal mechanism catalog for source and tectonic studies in Mexico from February 1928 to July 2022

Abstract

We present a focal mechanism catalog for earthquakes that occurred in Mexico and surrounding areas reported from February 1928 to July 2022. The magnitude of the events varies from −0.9 to 8.2. The hypocentral depth is in the range of 0 < Z < 270 km. Focal mechanisms in this catalog are associated with tectonic, geothermal, and volcanic environments. Reported focal mechanisms were derived using different types of data at local, regional, and teleseismic distances and different methods such as first motions, composite solutions, waveform analysis, and moment tensor inversion. So far, focal mechanism data for earthquakes in Mexico are dispersed over many publications without any link among them. For this reason, we collect and revise focal mechanism solutions previously reported by different agencies and studies from published sources. Our catalog consists of 7664 focal mechanism solutions for a total of 5701 events since we report all the available focal mechanisms obtained by different authors and seismological agencies for each seismic event. Additionally, we classify the focal mechanisms according to their fault types using the ternary diagrams of Kaverina-type classification. We also rank the quality of the focal mechanism data into three categories: A, B, and C. A represents good/reliable data, B represents satisfactory data, and C represents poor/questionable data according to well-defined criteria. The main goal of this study is to provide a comprehensive compilation of focal mechanism data that can help in future source and tectonic studies in Mexico. The earthquake focal mechanism catalog described in this article is available at https://doi.org/10.6084/M9.FIGSHARE.21663668.V1 (Rodríguez-Pérez and Zúñiga, 2022).