Medieval defensive earthen architecture is typically represented by big and well maintained defensive walls, lookout towers or castles despite mostly represented by remains of tower walls or defensive walls. While studies on natural hazards have been carried out concerning these castles or lookout towers, there are no studies on defensive walls. Both are certainly significant from a cultural heritage perspective, despite the fact that the latter are less popular for the general public. In Southeast Spain, most of this kind of architecture has been affected, and occasionally reconstructed, by destructive earthquakes and/or landslides, in accordance with historical chronicles or field evidence, however, there are no records of low-scale natural hazards. Hence, aware of the importance of the prevention of natural hazards regarding the conservation of the cultural heritage, a National Emergency and Risk Management Plan for the Cultural Heritage, a National Plan for Preventive Conservation as well as a National Plan for Defensive Architecture have been enacted by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport. According to these plans, a risk charter, including natural and man-made hazards, should be completed in order to improve investment programming. Cultural heritage risk and cultural assets maps should be connected in order to become an instrument for managing preventive conservation. Natural hazards studies should be conducted in order to protect cultural heritage, though they are not usually performed, most likely due to their cost. However, some natural hazards studies have been published in scientific journals, mainly signed by university researchers or various Spanish research institutions such as the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain. Some of them, including the Spanish Seismic Network or the old Ministry of Environment (currently known as the Ministry for Ecological Transition), have published several hazard and risk maps which can be usually used in GIS format. Yet, most of them are not even known by researchers on cultural heritage due to the different administrative levels in charge of natural hazards. In this paper, some recommendations to prevent natural hazards in medieval defensive earthen architecture will be discussed.
<p>The Guadiana Menor River, included in the Guadalquivir foreland basin, at the northern border of the Betic Cordillera, has suffered in the last decade some low to moderate magnitude seismic series. For instance, the so called 2012-2013 Sabiote-Torreperogil seismic sequence, 1 to 5 km deep, being the biggest recorded event a m<sub>bLg</sub> 3.9 earthquake, and the so called 2016-2018 J&#243;dar-Peal de Becerro seismic series, less than 2 km and 9 to 13 km deep, 20 km southeast of the previous one, being a m<sub>bLg</sub> 4.1 event the greatest recorded magnitude. In both cases, seismic series show focal mechanism solutions mostly with strike-slip and some dip-slip and NW-SE compression with no clear tectonic features at surface, due to the sedimentary infill. The Spanish Instituto Geogr&#225;fico Nacional (IGN) national seismic network recorded in the last years, mainly in the region of the 2016-2018 seismic sequence, some low magnitude earthquakes, showing that the fault that hosted these events continues to be active.</p><p>This was the main reason to develop a little local seismic network in the region, designed with the aim to study this persistent seismicity in terms of locations and focal mechanism solutions when there could be available data. It is equipped with six triaxial broadband sensors specifically deployed for this purpose, and also sharing data coming from a near IGN seismic station in the region. The seven seismic stations present as uniform azimuthal distribution as possible around the seismicity, being the nearest station less than 5 km from the seismicity area, and the farthest about 30 km away. Anyway, the seismic network spatial distribution has been conditioned for the fact that they are not permanent housing stations, requiring electric power. Most of the seismic stations are recording data from September 2021.</p><p>Real-time records are shared with the Spanish IGN seismic network in order to improve regional locations. Until now, several low magnitude earthquakes, below the perceptibility level of the national seismic network, have been located. In addition, focal mechanisms have been computed for some low magnitude events (~ m<sub>bLg</sub> 2.0), congruent with strike-slip solutions.</p>
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