Western Macedonia earthquake of 13 May, 1995 ( Ms = 6.6) and seismic potential of Northern Greece

Abstract

The Western Macedonia earthquake of 13 May, 1995 occurred within a territory where high seismic hazard was not expected. However, the estimation of the seismic potential of Europe including Northern Greece, conducted earlier in the United Institute of Physics of the Earth RAS, testified to the existence of the seismotectonic situations of predominantly high prognostical M rmmax in this region. In particular, epicentral zone of Western Macedonia earthquake has prognostical M rmmax = 6,7 according to this data. Estimation of seismic potential was performed applying original seismotectonic method. The essence of this method lies in detecting of the hidden analogies in structure and state of the Earth's crust on detailed level, relevant to the seismic process. To achieve this, a zonation of the vast territories with different tectonic units was performed, according to the seismotectonic settings. The map of the seismotectonic settings has been obtained after performing the complex detailed typification of Earth's crust on the base of data reflecting the recent structure and state of the Earth's crust. The types of the Earth's crust are considered as seismotectonic settings due chosen initial parameters. Comparison of their spatial distribution with seismological data allows to give the prognostical values of M max to the most of them. Further spreading obtained estimates of M max in space results in yielding of the zonation of study area according to the seismic potential.