Product catalogue
A pragmatic approach to adjusting early instrumental local magnitudes for seismic hazard assessments in Australia
Prior to the development of Australian-specific magnitude formulae, the 1935 magnitude corrections by Charles Richter – originally developed for southern California – was almost exclusively used to calculate earthquake magnitudes throughout Australia prior to the 1990s. Due to the difference in ground-motion attenuation between southern California and much of Australia, many historical earthquake magnitudes are likely to be overestimated in the Australian earthquake catalogue. A method has been developed that corrects local magnitudes using the difference between the original (inappropriate) magnitude corrections and the Australian-specific corrections at a distance determined by the nearest recording station likely to have recorded the earthquake. These corrections have reduced the rates of local magnitudes of 4.5 in the historical catalogue by about 30% since 1900, while the number of magnitude 5.0 earthquakes has reduced by about 60% in the same time period. The reduction in the number of moderate-to-large-magnitude earthquakes over the instrumental period yields long-term earthquake rates that are more consistent with present-day rates, since the development of Australian-specific magnitude formulae. The adjustment of historical earthquake magnitudes is important for seismic hazard assessments, which assume a Poisson distribution of earthquakes in space and time.
Simple
Identification info
- Date (Creation)
- 2020-07-09
- Date (Publication)
- 2021-06-01T05:08:39
- Citation identifier
- Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/140159
Identifier
- Codespace
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Digital Object Identifier
- Cited responsible party
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Author Allen, T.I.
- Issue identification
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Journal of Seismology
- Purpose
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External Publication
- Status
- Completed
- Point of contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Point of contact Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice Point of contact Allen, T.
PSCD Internal Contact Resource provider Place, Space and Communities Division
External Contact
- Spatial representation type
- Topic category
-
- Geoscientific information
Extent
Extent
))
- Maintenance and update frequency
- Not planned
Resource format
- Title
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Product data repository: Various Formats
- Website
-
Data Store directory containing the digital product files
Data Store directory containing one or more files, possibly in a variety of formats, accessible to Geoscience Australia staff only for internal purposes
- theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf
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Seismology and Seismic Exploration
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Earthquake Engineering
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EARTH SCIENCES
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Natural Hazards
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- Keywords
-
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Published_External
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Resource constraints
- Title
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence
- Alternate title
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CC-BY
- Edition
-
4.0
- Access constraints
- License
- Use constraints
- License
Resource constraints
- Title
-
Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- Classification
- Unclassified
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
Distribution Information
- Distributor contact
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Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Distributor Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice
- OnLine resource
-
Link to article
Link to article
- Distribution format
-
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html
-
Resource lineage
- Statement
-
Not supplied.
Metadata constraints
- Title
-
Australian Government Security Classification System
- Edition date
- 2018-11-01T00:00:00
- Classification
- Unclassified
Metadata
- Metadata identifier
-
urn:uuid/02add33b-fbcf-4419-9ed9-34e6b9e5faeb
- Title
-
GeoNetwork UUID
- Language
- English
- Character encoding
- UTF8
- Contact
-
Role Organisation / Individual Name Details Point of contact Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)
Voice Point of contact Allen, T.
PSCD Internal Contact
Type of resource
- Resource scope
- Document
- Name
-
External Publication
Alternative metadata reference
- Title
-
Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with
uuid
- Citation identifier
- eCatId/140159
- Date info (Creation)
- 2019-04-08T01:55:29
- Date info (Revision)
- 2019-04-08T01:55:29
Metadata standard
- Title
-
AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014
Metadata standard
- Title
-
ISO 19115-1:2014
Metadata standard
- Title
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ISO 19115-3
- Title
-
Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014
- Edition
-
Version 2.0, September 2018
- Citation identifier
- https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/122551