An updated and unified earthquake catalog from 1787 to 2018 for seismic hazard assessment studies in Mexico

Abstract

Here we present a new updated and unified Poissonian earthquake catalog for Mexico. The details about the catalog compilation, the removal of duplicate events, unifying the magnitude scales, removal of dependent events through the declustering process and its completeness analysis are presented. Earthquake and focal mechanism data have been compiled from various local, regional and international sources. Large earthquake events (MW ≥ 6.5) have been carefully revised for their epicentral locations and magnitudes from trusted publications. Different magnitude-conversion relationships, compatible with available local and regional ones, has been established to obtain unified moment magnitude estimates for the whole catalog. Completeness periods for the declustered catalog were estimated for the definition of appropriate seismic source models for the whole territory. The final unified Poissonian earthquake catalog spans from 1787 to 2018, covering a spatial extent of 13° to 33°N and 91° to 117°W. This catalog is compatible with other published catalogs providing basis for new analysis related to seismicity, seismotectonics and seismic hazard assessment in Mexico.

GIS-Based Mapping of Seismic Parameters for the Pyrenees

“…In this work, the method suggested by Gardner and Knopoff [78] was selected due to its clarity, simplicity, and stability [2,3,32]. Besides, this method has proven its efficiency in most of the recent research [8,10,31,81,82], and particularly for the studied area [2,7]. As the more energetic an earthquake is, the more temporal and geographical extension is involved, this method defines temporal and spatial windows depending on the main earthquake.…”

“…In seismicity studies, some parameters have a particularly important role. Among others, these are the maximum magnitude (recorded, possible, expected), the b-value of the Gutenberg-Richter (GR) frequency-magnitude (FMD) relation, and a parameter related to the seismic activity (mean seismic activity rate or the a-value of GR) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Some of these studies are based on seismic zonations [1,2], and others are found in a purely geographical grid division [7,11,14,15].…”

“…The importance of earthquake catalogs in seismic studies is crucial [8,10,11,[29][30][31]. Due to the different content of seismic information for both historical and instrumental epochs, a critical point in the catalog analysis is to generate a reliable, updated, extensive, and homogeneous catalog for the studied region to make the results comparable.…”

“…Due to the different content of seismic information for both historical and instrumental epochs, a critical point in the catalog analysis is to generate a reliable, updated, extensive, and homogeneous catalog for the studied region to make the results comparable. In areas where historical seismicity data are available, they must be included in the working catalog to conduct a complete and robust analysis [1][2][3]10,[32][33][34]. Besides, the size of the (non-small) earthquakes is usually given in moment magnitude (M w ) [35], as it has a direct relation with the released energy through scalar seismic moments and does not get saturated for larger events.…”

“…After those conversions, a proper b-value requires estimating the magnitude of completeness (M c ), which is an essential and mandatory step to conduct a seismic analysis. M c can be defined as the lowest magnitude at which 100% of the earthquakes in a space-time volume are detected [10,75]. There are multiple methods to estimate this value, and in-depth analysis can be found in Mignan and Woessner [75].…”