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. 2024 Nov 26;11(1):1290.
doi: 10.1038/s41597-024-04133-y.

The catalogue of 1987-2023 earthquakes in the western (French) Alps north of 43.5°N

Mickael Langlais  1 , Gael Janex  1 , Philippe Guéguen  2 , Agnès Helmstetter  1 , Anne Paul  1 , Jean Virieux  1 , Emeline Maufroy  1 , Jean-Noël Bouvier  1
Affiliations

The catalogue of 1987-2023 earthquakes in the western (French) Alps north of 43.5°N

Mickael Langlais et al. Sci Data. .

Abstract

The western Alpine belt is the focal point of moderate but constant seismic activity. Numerous geodynamic and seismological studies underline the many scientific questions linked to Alpine dynamic processes and the associated rate of deformation resulting from late continental collision phases, and the assessment of seismic hazard and its associated risks. Seismic monitoring in the northern French Alps was launched in 1987 with the installation of the first seismological network, hosted by the Earth Science Observatory at Grenoble Alpes University. Since then, the network has been updated over the years, keeping pace with technical developments in seismic instrumentation, monitoring and data management. The homogenization of information described in this scientific data paper is motivated by the need for a single instrumental seismic catalogue, consisting in arrival times picks and hypocenters using the same velocity model. The final catalogue SISMalp-1987-2023 (CC-BY-4.0) contains 50,822 weak-to-moderate earthquakes with local magnitude between -1.8 and 5.0; it can serve as a basis for all general seismotectonic and risk assessment studies in the region.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
SISMalp stations (left) during the period 1987–2013 and (right) today (end 2023). BB, SP and SM: broad-band, short-period and strong-motion stations, respectively. The blue dashed line shows the geographic area covered by the catalogue of earthquakes published in this data paper.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Map of earthquake epicentres from the SISMalp-1987-2023 catalogue. The blue dashed line shows the geographic area covered by the catalogue. The outer grey circles are epicentres detected by the SISMalp network but not distributed by SISMalp.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
The SISMalp 1987–2023 catalogue. (a) Cumulative number of earthquakes per year with significant seismic sequences that temporally modify background seismicity and network upgrade that improves detection. (b) Annual frequency of occurrence by magnitude for the 1989–2023 catalogue. (c) Evolution of the annual frequency of occurrence according to the main upgrade periods (1989–2000, 2001–2012 and 2013–2023), showing the improvement in detection.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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