Gasperini, Paolo

With the goal of constructing a homogeneous data set of moment magnitudes (Mw) to be used for seismic hazard assessment, we compared Mw estimates from moment tensor catalogues available online. We found an apparent scaling disagreement between Mw estimates from the National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) of the US Geological Survey and from the Global Centroid Moment Tensor (GCMT) project. We suspect that this is the effect of an underestimation ofMw > 7.0 (M0 > 4.0 × 1019 Nm) computed by NEIC owing to the limitations of their computational approach. We also found an apparent scaling disagreement between GCMT and two regional moment tensor catalogues provided by the ‘Eidgen¨ossische Technische Hochschule Z¨urich’ (ETHZ) and by the European–Mediterranean Regional Centroid Moment Tensor (RCMT) project of the Italian ‘Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia’ (INGV). This is probably the effect of the overestimation of Mw < 5.5 (M0 < 2.2 × 1017 Nm), up to year 2002, and of Mw < 5.0 (M0 < 4.0 × 1016 Nm), since year 2003, owing to the physical limitations of the standard CMT inversion method used by GCMT for the earthquakes of relatively low magnitude. If the discrepant data are excluded from the comparisons, the scaling disagreements become insignificant in all cases. We observed instead small absolute offsets (≤0.1 units) for NEIC and ETHZ catalogues with respect to GCMT whereas there is an almost perfect correspondence between RCMT and GCMT. Finally, we found a clear underestimation of about 0.2 units of Mw magnitudes computed at the INGV using the time-domain moment tensor (TDMT) method with respect to those reported by GCMT and RCMT. According to our results, we suggest appropriate offset corrections to be applied to Mw estimates from NEIC, ETHZ and TDMT catalogues before merging their data with GCMT and RCMT catalogues. We suggest as well to discard the probably discrepant data from NEIC and GCMT if other Mw estimates from different sources are available for the same earthquakes. We also estimate approximately the average uncertainty of individual Mw estimates to be about 0.07 magnitude units for the GCMT, NEIC, RCMT and ETHZ catalogues and about 0.13 for the TDMT catalogue.

We describe a new catalogue of strong ltalian earthquakes that the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica in collaboration with SGA, has recently made available to the international scientific community and to the general public. The new catalogue differs from previous efforts in that for each event the usual seismic parameters are complemented by a list of intensity rated localities, a complete list of relevant references, a series of synoptic comments describing different aspects of the earthquake phenomenology. and in most cases even the text of the original written sources. The printed part of the catalogue has been published as a special monograph which contains also a computer version of the full database in the form of a CD-ROM. The software package includes a computer program for retrieving, selecting and displaying the catalogue data.

We analyse two high-quality Southern Californian earthquake catalogues, one with focal mechanisms, to statistically model and test for dependencies of the earthquake-size distribution, the b-values, on both faulting style and depth. In our null hypothesis, b is assumed constant. We then develop and calibrate one model based only on faulting style, another based only on depth dependence and two models that assume a simultaneous dependence on both parameters. We develop a new maximum-likelihood estimator corrected for the degrees of freedom to assess models’ performances. Our results show that all models significantly reject the null hypothesis. The best performing is the one that simultaneously takes account of depth and faulting style. Our results suggest that differential-stress variations in the Earth’s crust systematically influence b-values and that this variability should be considered for contemporary seismic hazard studies.

The interpretation of sea level variations along the coasts of the Mediterranean region must be accompanied by the evaluation of vertical land movements associated with seismic and volcanic sources. This can be tentatively carried out through seismic strain analysis based on data pertaining the last 2 millennia as well as from the study of maritime archaeological structures.

In the last two decades, several studies addressed the revaluation and homogenization of the Italian instrumental seismic catalog, but all of them refer to the time interval from 1981, that is, the starting year of the Catalogo Strumentale dei Terremoti Italiani (CSTI). At the time, the CSTI was conceived as the continuation of the catalog of the Progetto Finalizzato Geodinamica (PFG) but, over time, the PFG catalog was almost totally forgotten, and presently it is even difficult to obtain because it is not provided by any website. In this work, we integrate a genuine copy of PFG, with additional locations from the bulletins of the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica (ING, now known as INGV) and of the International Seismological Centre (ISC) and with local magnitudes from two couples of Wood–Anderson (WA) seismometers operational in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, mostly derived from a careful scrutiny of paper bulletins of the Osservatorio Geofisico Sperimentale (OGS) and of the ING. We restrict our analysis to the time interval from 1960 to 1980 because, based on various evidence, we can infer that within such period most instrumental magnitudes reported by the PFG catalog are reasonably coherent with the Richter’s definition. Magnitudes provided by WA stations and other data sources are calibrated with respect to Mw by general orthogonal regressions. The final catalog from 1960 to 1980 contains 8536 earthquakes, of which we compute a true or proxy Mw magnitude with related uncertainty for 6407. The analysis of the frequency–magnitude distribution indicates completeness for about Mw ≥4:0. This work extends the time coverage of the Italian instrumental catalog to about 55 yrs before the present, allowing the statistical study of some important seismic periods that occurred, for example, in 1962 (Irpinia), 1968 (Belice Valley), 1976 (Friuli), 1979 (Umbria), and 1980 (Irpinia).

We compare the ability of three aftershock decay models proposed in the literature to reproduce the behavior of 24 real aftershock sequences of Southern California and Italy. In particular, we consider the Modified Omori Model (MOM), the Modified Stretched Exponential model (MSE) and the Band Limited Power Law (LPL). We show that, if the background rate is modeled properly, the MSE or the LPL reproduce the aftershock rate decay generally better than the MOM and are preferable, on the basis of the Akaike and Bayesian information criteria, for about one half of the sequences. In particular the LPL, which is usually preferable with respect to the MSE and fits well the data of most sequences, might represent a valid alternative to the MOM in real-time forecasts of aftershock probabilities. We also show that the LPL generally fits the data better than a purely empirical formula equivalent to the aftershock rate equation predicted by the rate- and state-dependent friction model. This indicates that the emergence of a negative exponential decay at long times is a general property of many aftershock sequences but also that the process of aftershock generation is not fully described by current physical models.

Earthquakes fault plane solutions (FPSs) are routinely computed on the basis of various techniques and are reported in the literature with a wide range of formats and conventions. Although the equations relating the various parameters are well known and relatively simple, their practical application often arise to numerical singularities and indeterminations that sometimes are not well known by the authors and thus may result in wrongor inaccurate reportingof parameters. Such inaccuracies and mistakes affect about 40% of the published data we have examined to test our programs. Moreover the current use, in the seismological community, of at least two different coordinate systems to represent the Cartesian components of vectorial and tensorial quantities is a further cause of confusion. In order to simplify the management of such data, we have prepared a structured package of FORTRAN 77 subroutines performingalmost all of the possible computations and conversions amongdifferent parameters and coordinate systems. The package has been extensively tested with the data of a revised database of FPS of Italy and surrounding regions (presented in a companion paper) as well as of CMT solutions included in the Harvard catalog. r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

We analyzed the available instrumental data on Italian earthquakes from 1960 to 1996 to compute the parameters of the time-magnitude distribution model proposed by Reasenberg and Jones (1989) and currently used to make aftershock forecasting in California. From 1981 to 1996 we used the recently released Catalogo Strumentale dei Terremoti ‘Italiani’ (CSTI) (Instrumental Catalog Working Group, 2001) joining the data of the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) and of the Italian major local seismic network, with magnitude revalued according to Gasperini (2001). From 1960 to 1980 we used instead the Progetto Finalizzato Geodinamica (PFG) catalog (Postpischl, 1985) with magnitude corrected to be homogeneous with the following period. About 40 sequences are detected using two different algorithms and the results of themodeling for the corresponding ones are compared. The average values of distribution parameters (p = 0.93±0.21, Log10(c) = –1.53±0.54, b = 0.96±0.18 and a = –1.66±0.72) are in fair agreement with similar computations performed in other regions of the World. We also analyzed the spatial variation of model parameters that can be used to predict the sequence behavior in the first days of future Italian seismic crisis, before a reliable modeling of the ongoing sequence is available. Moreover some nomograms to expeditiously estimate probabilities and rates of aftershock in Italy are also computed.

We analyzed the correlations among the parameters of the Reasenberg and Jones [Reasenberg, P.A., Jones, L.M., 1989. Earthquake hazard after a mainshock in California, Science 243, 1173–1176] formula describing the aftershock rate after a mainshock as a function of time and magnitude, on the basis of parameter estimates made in previous works for New Zealand, Italy and California. For all of three datasets we found that the magnitude-independent productivity a is significantly correlated with the b-value of the Gutenberg–Richter law and, in some cases, with parameters p and c of the modified Omori’s law. We also found significant correlations between p and c but, different from some previous works, not between p and b.We verified that assuming a coefficient for mainshock magnitude α≈2/3b (instead of b) removes the correlation between a and b and improves the ability to forecast the behavior of Italian sequences occurred from 1997 to 2003 on the basis of average parameters estimated from sequences occurred from 1981 to 1996. This assumption well agrees with direct α estimates made in the framework of an epidemic type model (ETAS) from the data of some large Italian sequences. Our results suggest a modification of the original Reasenberg and Jones (1989) formulation leading to predict lower rates (and probabilities) for stronger mainshocks and conversely higher rates for weaker ones. We also inferred that the correlation of a with p and c might be the consequence of the trade-off between the two parameters of the modified Omori’s law. In this case the correlation can be partially removed by renormalizing the time-dependent part of the rate equation. Finally, the absence of correlation between p and b, observed for all the examined datasets, indicates that such correlation, previously inferred from theoretical considerations and empirical results in some regions, does not represent a common property of aftershock sequences in different part of the world.