A catalogue of seismicity in Greece and adjacent areas

Abstract

A new earthquake catalogue for Greece has been formed to cover the instrumental period 1901-78, in particular 605 earthquakes for the period 1917-63 inclusive are relocated using first arrival data from the International Seismological Summary. These relocations incorporate macroseismically and other well-controlled master events into an ensuing joint epicentre determination technique. The largest annual average shift is 165 km for 78 earthquakes during the decade after 1917, decreasing to 17 km for the later years 1957-63. Magnitudes are redetermined mainly using readings from the Swedish network and Uppsala since as early as 1908. Catalogue completeness exists for magnitudes around 5.5 for at least the last 60 years, but magnitudes of about 4.7 are completely reported only during the most recent 15 years.The new epicentral positions lead to a better delineation of the seismic zones than has previously been achieved. The majority of shallow earthquakes are contained in a belt parallel to the Hellenic Arc which extends north into Albania, in the south-east the epicentral locations give a more diffuse extension of this zone into the west coast of Turkey. Depths of intermediate earthquakes along the Hellenic Arc tend to relocate to shallower depths, in the south-west part of Crete no earthquake focus deeper than 100 km is found, although in the south-eastern section of the arc a tendency to increased depths is observed. A second zone starts at Leukas Island in the west and extends through central Greece to near Volos on the east coast, where it divides into two branches, which are less well defined, but which eventually join the seismicity of western Turkey. A third zone follows the Saronikos and Corinth gulfs.

Deformation and stress regimes in the Hellenic subduction zone from focal Mechanisms

“…A well-developed Benioff zone was identified by seismicity to a depth of 150-180 km below the central Aegean (e.g. Papazachos, 1973;Makropoulos and Burton, 1981;Papadopoulos et al, 1986;Knapmeyer, 1999;Papazachos et al, 2000) and the subducting lithosphere can be followed down to about 1200 km by seismic tomography (e.g. Spakman et al, 1988;Bijwaard and Spakman, 1998).…”

Source Parameters of Moderate and Strong Earthquakes in the Broader Area of Zakynthos Island (W. Greece) From Regional and Teleseismic Digital Recordings

“…This is reflected on the existed comprehensive catalogues of seismic events for Greece, where the occurrence of more than 4500 intermediate-size earthquakes during the last 50 years, with several large and de-structive events among them, can be confirmed (Makropoulos & Burton, 1981). The area is characterized by horizontal compression almost perpendicular to the Hellenic Arc, which is thought to have been initiated during the Miocene (Hatzfeld et al, 1990).…”

Regional seismic hazard for Revithoussa, Greece: an earthquake early warning Shield and selection of alert signals

“…Generally speaking, the earthquake records , M S ≥ 5.5) for Greece can be regarded as complete samples of data (e.g. Makropoulos and Burton 1981;Makropoulos et al, 1989;Papazachos and Papazachou, 1997;Papaioannou and Papazachos, 2000). We use these records for analysis in this paper.…”

“…First we update the MB earthquake catalogue for Greece 1900-1978(Makropoulos and Burton 1981Makropoulos et al, 1989) to include 1979-1999(Burton et al, 2003c. The basic references for this updated work are ISC, NEIC and CMT Harvard catalogues.…”