Unification of data from various seismic catalogues to study seismic activity in the Carpathians Mountain arc

Abstract

The Carpathian Mountainsarc is the most seismically active area in Central Europe. Analysis of the seismicity of entire Carpathian arc requires data from each of the particular catalogues which have to be properly and uniformly entered, standardized and merged. For our study we first had to prepare a database of seismic events (ML ≥ 1.6) compiled from the data of earthquakes taken from individual national seismic networks as well as data from international seismic centers. However, a careful review of these catalogues has uncovered significant inconsistencies, particularly discrepancies in the description of the location, magnitude and completeness of seismic events. To address these inconsistencies, a newly created compound earthquake catalogue was compiled from the aforementioned seismic catalogues and included events that occurred in the Carpathian Mountains arc area between 1976 and 2017. This work is intended to point out some of the problems associated with collecting data from various seismic catalogues as well as the need for their very careful verification, in order to create a uniform set of seismic data across a large area spanning numerous countries. The results suggest that compiling a uniform and dependable earthquake catalogue is crucial for reliable seismic studies.

Keywords

• earthquakes
• carpathians
• seismic catalogues
• magnitude