Observatories and Research Facilities for EUropean Seismology
Volume 1, no 1 January 1999 Orfeus Newsletter


Inventory of Data from Seismographic Networks of the World

John Lahr1, Willie Lee2 and Torild van Eck3
1 USGS, Geologic Hazards Team, MS966, PO Box 25046, Denver, CO 80225-046, USA.
2 IASPEI, PO Box 60099, Palo Alto, CA 94306-0099, USA.
3 ORFEUS, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, PO Box 201, 3730 AE De Bilt, Netherlands.

Academic Press will publish an International Handbook of Earthquake and Engineering Seismology (Paul Jennings, Hiroo Kanamori and Willie Lee, Editors) as an IASPEI Centennial volume in 2001. One chapter will be devoted to An Inventory of Data from Seismograph Networks of the World with John Lahr and Randy White as the coordinators, and Steve Malone, Carlos Redondo, Torild van Eck and others as regional coordinators. Specifically, this chapter will be a compilation of instrumental earthquake catalogs or "station bulletins" or pointers to these archives for each seismic network. Seismologists may contribute either by submitting instrumental earthquake catalogs or "station bulletins" from their networks or by providing information on how to access their archives.

Call for European/Mediterranean Seismic Network Contributors

We sollicitate contributions of European-Mediterranean seismic networks. If you agree to contribute we would appreciate if you send the following information at your earliest convenience to John Lahr (e-mail: lahr@usgs.gov):

  1. Your name, mailing address, telephone number, fax number, & email address.
  2. Name of your seismic network and an approximate number of stations.
  3. The approximate location of your seismic network and areal coverage in square kilometers.
  4. The time period of your data, and approximate number of earthquakes.
  5. Approximate size (in megabytes) of your earthquake catalog.
  6. Approximate size (in megabytes) of your phase data used in deriving your earthquake catalog.
  7. Approximate size (in gigabytes) of your digital waveform data of significant earthquakes that you would like to archive at the IRIS DMC or ORFEUS.
  8. Your choice of deadline for manuscript/data submission: March 31 or September 30, 1999. Please select the first if possible, so that we can start the reviewing process.

For each participating network there will be a 1/2 page abstract within the printed volume of the Handbook. For the bulletin, phase and possibly waveform, which will be stored on one or more attached CD-ROM's, we propose two alternatives.

Alternative 1: Provide the following information for the CD-ROM:

  1. A description of the seismic network, including station history, coordinates, and instrumentation.
  2. A description of the data processing and limitations of the data, including velocity structure model(s), method(s) for computing hypocenter parameters, magnitude(s), etc.
  3. An earthquake catalog in the form of computer readable ASCII file(s), with explanations of the format.
  4. A copy of the source code for the program(s) used to locate and determine the magnitude of the events. Include a copy of any auxiliary files used, such as for station coordinates and calibration.
  5. The phase data files (arrival times, amplitudes, coda durations, etc.) used in deriving the earthquake catalog with an explanation of the format(s).
  6. Seismic waveform data of significant earthquakes (e.g., magnitude 6 or greater events within 100 km) in SEED format.

Alternative 2: Include within the 1/2 page abstract of the Handbook clear references to where the above data can be obtained or is available (for example a local web address or archive with access description, mailing address or archival centra like IRIS, NEIC, ORFEUS, EMSC, etc.). In case you choose this second alternative, please, have look at seismo-data at the ORFEUS web site and check for completeness.

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