DOI: 10.5880/gfz.ews.2015.001
title: EMCA Central Asia Earthquake catalogue

description: Version History11 Sep 2019: Release of Version 1.1 with the following changes: (1) new licence: CC BY SA 4.0, modification of the title: removal of file name and version); (2) addition of ORIDs when available. The metadata of the first version 1.0 is available in the download folder.. Data and file names remain unchanged. The EMCA (Earthquake Model Central Asia) catalogue (Mikhailova et al., 2015) includes information for 33620 earthquakes that occurred in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan). The catalogue provides for each event the estimated magnitude in terms of MLH (surface wave magnitude) scale, widely used in former USSR countries.MLH magnitudes range from 1.5 to 8.3. Although the catalogue spans the period from 2000 BC to 2009 AD, most of the entries (i.e. 33378) describe earthquakes that occurred after 1900. The catalogue includes the standard parametric information required for seismic hazard studies (i.e., time, location and magnitude values). The catalogue has been composed by integrating different sources (using different magnitude scales) and harmonised in terms of MLH scale. The MLH magnitude is determined from the horizontal component of surface waves (Rautian and Khalturin, 1994) and is reported in most of the seismic bulletins issued by seismological observatories in Central Asia. For the instrumental period MLH magnitude was estimated, when not directly measured, either from body wave magnitude (Mb), the energy class (K) or Mpva (regional magnitude by body waves determined by P-wave recorded by short-period instruments) using empirical regression analyses. The following relationships were used to estimate MLH (see Mikhailova, internal EMCA report, 2014):(1) MLH=0.47 K-1.15(2) MLH=1.34 Mb-1.89(3) MLH=1.14 Mpva-1.45When multiple scales were available for the same earthquake, priority was given to the conversion from K class. For the historical period, the MLH values were obtained from macroseismic information (Kondorskaya and Ulomov, 1996).
description: The catalogue is distributed as a ascii file in CSV (Comma Separated Value) format and UTF-8 encoding. A separate .csvt file is provided for column type specification (useful for importing the .csv file in QGIS and other similar environments).For each event the estimated location is provided as longitude, latitude, with the following spatial reference system: +proj=longlat +ellps=WGS84 +datum=WGS84 +no_defsWhen possible, precise indication of the events´ time in UTC format are provided.Distribution file: "EMCA_SeismoCat_v1.0.csv" Version: v1.0 Release date: 2015-07-30Header of CSV file:id: (int) serial ID of the eventyear: (int) Year of the event. Negative years refer to BCE (Before Common Era / Before Christ) eventsmonth: (int, 1-12) Month of the year for the eventday: (int, 1-31) Day of the month for the eventhour : (int, 0-23) Hour of the daymin: (int, 0-59) Minute of the hoursec: (int, 0-59) Second (and hundredth of second, if available) of the minutelat: (float) Latitude of the eventlon: (float) Longitude of the eventfdepth: (int) Focal depth of event in kmmlh: (float) Surface wave magnitude (see e.g. Rautian T. and V. Khalturin, 1994)