An earthquake catalog has been compiled (and is updated in real-time) that spans the period from 1000 A.D. to the present. For the period from 1000 to 2013, we have adopted the outstanding work of the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) Project (see https://www.globalquakemodel.org/) which has developed a world-wide earthquake catalog. The development of the GEM earthquake catalog involved new, historical research, earthquake magnitude estimation relationships, and updated instrumental earthquake magnitude estimates.
The GEM earthquake catalog work was divided into two parts:
- Historical information (Global Earthquake History) (Albini, et al., 2013), and
- Instrumental data (Instrumental Earthquake Catalogue) (Storchak, et al., 2012).
The historical catalog work covers the period from 1000 – 1903. The catalog based on instrumental data was carried out by GEM and the International Seismological Centre (ISC) (see http://www.isc.ac.uk/). The instrumental catalog covers the period from 1900 – 2013.
The U.S. Geological Survey earthquake catalog was used to complete the earthquake catalog for the period from 2013 to May 2016.
Since May 2016, the NPDP earthquake database and application system retrieves earthquake information in real-time from the USGS (see http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/feed/ ). Data on earthquakes of magnitude 4.5 and greater is retrieved, the earthquake database is auto-populated and the earthquakes are mapped on the Earthquake-Dams website.
Citations
Albini, P., R.M.W. Musson, A.A. Gomez Capera, M. Locati, A. Rovida, M. Stucchi, and D. Viganò (2013), Global Historical Earthquake Archive and Catalogue (1000-1903), GEM Technical Report 2013-01 V1.0.0, 202pp., GEM Foundation, Pavia, Italy, doi: 10.13117/GEM.GEGD.TR2013.01.
Storchak D.A., D. Di Giacomo, I. Bondár, J. Harris, E.R. Engdahl, W.H.K. Lee, A. Villaseñor, P. Bormann, and G. Ferrari (2012), ISC-GEM Global Instrumental Earthquake Catalogue (1900-2009), GEM Technical Report 2012-01 V1.0.0, 128 pp., GEM Foundation, Pavia, Italy, doi: 10.13117/GEM.GEGD.TR2012.01.