The Algerian Homogenized Macroseismic Database (267–1989): A Deeper Insight into the Algerian Historical Seismicity

Abstract

Online Material: Sources of information on earthquakes and earthquake list. Studying the effects of past earthquakes is an important component of predicting the effects of future earthquakes, and knowledge of historic earthquakes is important for understanding future earthquakes. The revision of the historical seismicity of Algeria started at the beginning of this century and is still going on (e.g., Harbi, Benouar, and Benhallou, 2003; Sebai and Bernard, 2008). The final objective of this reappraisal is to produce an earthquake catalog for Algeria that is as homogeneous as possible, compiled in a unique format, and covering a period of time going back as far as the existing data allow. The idea to make the macroseismic database accessible to the scientific community arose after the compilation and publication of the earthquake catalog of eastern Algeria (Harbi et al. , 2010), which became a starting point for a catalog dealing with the whole country. One of our objectives, when we performed that work, was to check the validity of the parameters reported in the earthquake catalog that we compiled from previous works, particularly for the damaging and destructive earthquakes. The only way to achieve this goal was to reexamine all the available seismological compilations (see the Materials for the Investigation of Algeria Seismicity section). We noticed that some authors (e.g., Roussel, 1973; Mezcua and Martinez, 1983) assigned an intensity value to the earthquakes without quoting their sources. This implies some uncertainty, particularly when the intensity is higher than VI, and suggests a damaging earthquake. Two important reasons led us to revise the macroseismic parameters of Algerian earthquakes, particularly the maximum intensity values, and to assess or reassess the intensities in terms of one single intensity scale, the European …