Historical Catalogue Research Articles

Historical earthquakes in the Holy Cross Mountains, Poland, true or false? Unveiling insights through archaeoseismology

The Holy Cross Mountains are an intraplate range with a limited historical seismicity record. The only documented earthquakes include the February 6, 1837 M 4.3 event, which caused ground cracks, and swarm events from February 1932 (M ∼ 3.5), likely triggered by the Holy Cross Fault (HCF) or sub-perpendicular faults. The apparent lack of older destructive earthquakes in historical catalogs motivated us to conduct archaeoseismological research to improve seismic hazard assessment, risk mitigation, and urban planning strategies, ultimately benefiting local communities. We focused on the 12th-century Collegiate church of Saint Martin in Opatów, located near the Holly Cross Fault (HCF). We report numerous damage features, such as leaning, bulging, and twisted walls, dropped keystones in Romanesque and Gothic portals, strike-slip displacements of these portals, surplus, oversized buttresses, and walled-up portals. While some deformations may result from humid loess instability and war destructions, our data, combined with historical records, suggest two to three seismic events in the past 800 years as a cause. We argue these deformations were co-seismically triggered by either large far-field events, like the 1259 AD earthquake, or local, shallow small-magnitude events significantly amplified by site effects. This indicates potential seismic activity in the Holy Cross Mountains during Medieval times. The absence of historical records does not imply the absence of earthquakes.

Monte Carlo Based Sampling Distribution of Annual Rate of Exceedance for Earthquake Insurance

ABSTRACT Seismic hazard expressed in terms of annual rate of exceedance and is used to calculate the earthquake insurance premium. Annual rate of exceedance is a complicated function of magnitudes, distances from site to earthquake sources and attenuation. Due to its complexity, determination of exact sampling distribution of earthquake insurance premium is not an easy task. This research proposes Monte Carlo simulation approach to determine the sampling distribution of earthquake insurance premium. Annual rate of exceedance was simulated first and then the insurance premium calculated based on simulation of annual rate of exceedance. The simulation involves quantifying synthetic catalogue similar to historical catalogue. Its simulation is conducted in order to construct annual rate of exceedance as an indicator of earthquake risk used in earthquake insurance. The simulation of 25 iteration and sample size of 100 shows that the sampling distribution of insurance premium is skewed to the right. The idea of using Monte Carlo simulation to study the sampling distribution of annual rate of exceedance is the originality of the study and the study contributes to the methodology of earthquake insurance.

The deterioration of anthropological work in Mexico during the 21st century

This article analyzes how the working conditions for Mexican anthropologists have deteriorated throughout the last few decades. Until half a century ago, only a few dozen professional anthropologists practiced in Mexico, and most of them had access to stable, well-paid jobs in academia or government agencies. Today there are over 7000 of them working in a wide range of fields, mostly in temporary jobs with low salaries. Drawing from the data gathered in the Historical Catalogue of Theses on Social Anthropology in Mexico (RedMIFA 2018) and the Survey on Professional Practice and Working Conditions of Anthropologists in Mexico (CIEPA-CEAS 2016), this paper begins by outlining the decline of working conditions for Mexican anthropologists, focusing primarily on the younger generations. An analysis follows of the main factors that have contributed to the current situation, and the article closes with a brief commentary on the effects of precarious working conditions for the production of anthropological knowledge. The implications here are paradoxical: on the one hand, most professionals currently work in fields other than academia, thereby diversifying anthropological practice, and on the other there is a marked tendency towards the academization of professional anthropological education.

Deep learning and transfer learning of earthquake and quarry-blast discrimination: applications to southern California and eastern Kentucky

SUMMARY Discrimination between tectonic earthquakes (EQs) and quarry blasts is important for accurate EQ cataloguing and seismic hazard analysis. However, reliable classification of these two types of seismic events is challenging with no prior knowledge of source parameters. Here, we applied deep learning to perform this classification task in southern California and eastern Kentucky. Since the two regions differ significantly in available labelled data, class imbalance and waveform characteristics, we adopted different strategies for them. We directly trained a convolutional neural network (CNN) for southern California due to its data abundancy. To alleviate the class imbalance, the blast data were augmented by repeated sampling. The model for California yields F1-scores of >83.5 per cent when estimated by individual stations and >98.1 per cent by network average (i.e. averaging the CNN’s outputs on all available stations for each event). As eastern Kentucky has a much smaller data size, we apply transfer learning to the pre-trained California model to fit the Kentucky data. The transfer-learned model yields F1-scores of >86.9 per cent when estimated by individual stations and >96.7 per cent by network average. The transfer-learned model outperforms the model re-trained from scratch for the Kentucky data. Gradient-weighted class activation mapping shows the S onset and the S long-period coda are important to identify EQs and blasts, respectively. By visual inspections of the seismograms, the source locations, the origin time and the P-wave polarities, we verified that most of the events falsely predicted by our models are actually mislabelled by seismic analysts. Our models thus show great potential in helping seismic analysts find those mislabelled events which remain hidden in the historical catalogue. Our results demonstrate that deep learning can achieve high accuracy in seismic event discrimination and that transfer learning is effective and efficient to generalize deep learning models across different regions.

SimplETAS: A Benchmark Earthquake Forecasting Model Suitable for Operational Purposes and Seismic Hazard Analysis

Abstract The epidemic-type aftershock sequence (ETAS) model is the most effective mathematical description of the short-term space–time earthquake clustering. However, the use of such a model is sometimes hampered by the difficulty in estimating the high number of its unknown correlated parameters. Moreover, the most recent ETAS formulations introduce the space–time variability of some parameters that makes their estimation even more arduous. Here, we investigate the model in an opposite perspective, looking for the simplest ETAS parameterization that can satisfactorily describes the earthquake clustering in crustal tectonic regions; we named this model simplETAS. We show that simplETAS calibrated with the Italian seismicity of the last decades adequately describes the space–time occurrence of the out-of-sample largest earthquakes in the instrumental and historical catalog, confirming the validity of the assumptions made to build the model. Owing to its simplicity, simplETAS is easily applicable in most regions, and it has some important properties that are worth being remarked. First, simplETAS can be used as a benchmark model to assess the relative predictive skill of more complex earthquake forecasts. Second, it may be used for operational earthquake forecasting purposes in regions with limited earthquake catalogs. Third, it provides a straightforward, flexible, and effective approach to generate synthetic earthquake catalogs of variable length to be implemented in seismic hazard and risk analysis, overcoming all the declustering-related problems and the controversial Poisson assumption.

Discussion on “Stochastic assessment of seismic risk using faults to address the incomplete information in historical catalogues.” (Louloudis et al)

Discussion on “Stochastic assessment of seismic risk using faults to address the incomplete information in historical catalogues.” (Louloudis et al)

Spatio-temporal variations of seismic coupling along a transform fault: the western North Anatolian Fault Zone

SUMMARY The Main Marmara Fault (MMF) forms a major segment of the North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ) in northwestern Türkiye. The MMF represents a seismic gap with currently high seismic hazard and associated risk for the Istanbul metropolitan area. Here we estimate the seismic coupling defined as the ratio of the seismic strain rate to the tectonic strain rate, for the MMF and adjacent NAFZ segments. This ratio indicates the fraction of total strain accumulated with time that is released seismically. We compare the results of seismic strain rates and coupling estimated from earthquakes included in historical and instrumental catalogues, which allows us to identify fault segments that represent a considerable seismic threat during the current seismic cycle. We find that along the main fault traces hosting the large events, seismic strain rates from the historical catalogue are of the same order as the tectonic strain rates. In contrast, coupling estimates based on seismic data from the instrumental catalogue covering also off-fault areas, are up to 100 times smaller, highlighting that most of the seismic energy is released in large earthquakes with recurrence times longer than the time covered by the instrumental catalogue. Within the Sea of Marmara, a significant portion (48%) of shear strain from the instrumental catalogue is currently being accommodated by seismic deformation. Significant variations of the seismic coupling are observed before and after the 1999 M > 7 Izmit earthquake, highlighting the different contribution of aseismic slip over different portions of the seismic cycle. A comparison of the temporal evolution of the 1999 Izmit and Düzce post-seismic deformation with seismic strain rates shows that the largest seismic strain rates coincide with the largest post-seismic deformation.

Comparison of two individual identification algorithms for snow leopards (Panthera uncia) after automated detection

Photo-identification of individual snow leopards (Panthera uncia) is the primary data source for density estimation via capture-recapture statistical methods. To identify individual snow leopards in camera trap imagery, it is necessary to match individuals from a large number of images from multiple cameras and historical catalogues, which is both time-consuming and costly. The camouflaged snow leopards also make it difficult for machine learning to classify photos, as they blend in so well with the surrounding mountain environment, rendering applicable software solutions unavailable for the species. To potentially make snow leopard individual identification available via an artificial intelligence (AI) software interface, we first trained and evaluated image classification techniques for a convolutional neural network, pose invariant embeddings (PIE) (a triplet loss network), and compared the accuracy of PIE to that of the HotSpotter algorithm (a SIFT-based algorithm). Data were acquired from a curated library of free-ranging snow leopards taken in Afghanistan between 2012 and 2019 and from captive animals in zoos in Finland, Sweden, Germany, and the United States. We discovered several flaws in the initial PIE model, such as a small amount of background matching, that was addressed, albeit likely not fixed, using background subtraction (BGS) and left-right mirroring (LR) techniques which demonstrated reasonable accuracy (Rank 1: 74% Rank-5: 92%) comparable to the Hotspotter results (Rank 1: 74% Rank 2: 84%)The PIE BGS LR model, in conjunction with Hotspotter, yielded the following results: Rank-1: 85%, Rank-5: 95%, Rank-20: 99%. In general, our findings indicate that PIE BGS LR, in conjunction with HotSpotter, can classify snow leopards more accurately than using either algorithm alone.

Law, Provenance Research, and Restitution of Colonial Cultural Property: Reflections on (In)Equality and a Sri Lankan Object in the Netherlands

The status of colonial objects in European museums touches upon a matrix of legal and historical issues. This article engages with some of them, while referring to the case of a Sri Lankan object in the possession of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (RMA) in the Netherlands: a ceremonial cannon looted by the Dutch from the King of Kandy in 1765. The article offers a historical overview of the European colonial domination of Ceylon, distinguishing between the Portuguese, Dutch, and British periods, and for each period distinguishes the nature and the size of the confiscated heritage. It also analyses Sri Lanka’s legal title to the cannon, and the discrepancy between the international and mostly Euro-centric legal regime and Sri Lanka’s own legal framework. The article moves on to analyses of and reflections about the type of provenance research practiced by the RMA, as well as the broader efforts in the Netherlands for better provenance research. The importance of the cannon for both Sri Lanka and the Netherlands, as well as earlier efforts to retrieve it, are also described and evaluated. In its conclusions, the article proffers suggestions for more balance and equality in the provenance research efforts. The contribution covers legal studies, history, and museum studies and is based on the literature, historical catalogues, and other documents, as well as the practice of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries titution in case of Illicit Appropriation (ICPRCP).

The 2022 Seismic Sequence in the Northern Adriatic Sea and Its Long-Term Simulation

We studied the long-term features of earthquakes caused by a fault system in the northern Adriatic sea that experienced a series of quakes beginning with two main shocks of magnitude 5.5 and 5.2 on 9 November 2022 at 06:07 and 06:08 UTC, respectively. This offshore fault system, identified through seismic reflection profiles, has a low slip rate of 0.2–0.5 mm/yr. As the historical record spanning a millennium does not extend beyond the inter-event time for the largest expected earthquakes (M≃6.5), we used an earthquake simulator to generate a 100,000-year catalogue with 121 events of Mw≥5.5. The simulation results showed a recurrence time (Tr) increasing from 800 yrs to 1700 yrs as the magnitude threshold increased from 5.5 to 6.5. However, the standard deviation σ of inter-event times remained at a stable value of 700 yrs regardless of the magnitude threshold. This means that the coefficient of variation (Cv=σ/Tr) decreased from 0.9 to 0.4 as the threshold magnitude increased from 5.5 to 6.5, making earthquakes more predictable over time for larger magnitudes. Our study supports the use of a renewal model for seismic hazard assessment in regions of moderate seismicity, especially when historical catalogues are not available.

:Holy Digital Grail: A Medieval Book on the Internet

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The Impact of Retail E-Commerce on Relative Prices and Consumer Welfare

Abstract This paper examines the impact of retail e-commerce on pricing behavior and welfare. Using Japanese data, we find that e-commerce lowered relative inflation rates for goods sold intensively online. We use long time series and historical catalog sales as an instrument for e-commerce sales intensity. The entry of e-commerce firms raised the rate of intercity price convergence in physical stores for goods sold intensively online, but not for other goods, which suggests e-commerce enhances price arbitrage. We estimate that e-commerce lowered variety-adjusted prices on average by 0.9 percent between 1996 and 2014, and more in cities with highly educated populations.

Stochastic assessment of seismic risk using faults to address the incomplete information in historical catalogues

Stochastic assessment of seismic risk using faults to address the incomplete information in historical catalogues

A multi-hazard historical catalogue for the city-island-state of Malta (Central Mediterranean)

The city-island-state of Malta is traditionally viewed as a low-hazard country with the lack of a long historical catalogue of extreme events and their impacts acting as an obstacle to formulating evidence-based policies of disaster risk reduction. In this paper, we present the first multi-hazard historical catalogue for Malta which extends from the Miocene to 2019 CE. Drawing on over 3500 documents and points of reference, including historical documentary data, official records and social media posts, we identify at least 1550 hazard events which collectively have caused the loss of at least 662 lives. Recognising that historical materials relating to Malta are complicated by the presence of a strong temporal bias, we establish a four-point reliability indicator and apply this to each of the 1065 recordings, with the result that some 79% show a high degree of reliability. For an island state where there are significant gaps in the knowledge and understanding of the environmental extremes and their impacts over time, this paper addresses and fills these gaps in order to inform the development of public-facing and evidence-based policies of disaster risk reduction in Malta.

Testing of the Seismic Gap Hypothesis in a Model With Realistic Earthquake Statistics

AbstractThe seismic gap hypothesis states that fault regions where no large earthquake has recently occurred, are more prone than others to host the next large earthquake. It can lead to the idea of immunity after local disaster which, notwithstanding it sounds reasonable, it has been frequently rejected by objective testing. More generally, the estimate of the occurrence probability of the next big shock on the basis of the time delay from the last earthquake still represents a big challenge. The problem is that this issue cannot be addressed only on the basis of historical catalogs which contain too few well documented big shocks, and decades of future observations appear necessary. On the other hand, recent results have shown that important insights can be obtained from the spatial organization of aftershocks and its relationship to the mainshock slip profile. Here, we address this issue by monitoring the stress evolution together with the occurrence of big shocks and their aftershocks in a model where the fault is described as an elastic interface embedded in a ductile medium. The model reproduces all relevant statistical features of earthquake occurrence and allows us to perform accurate testing of the seismic gap hypothesis and its consequences, particularly on the side of aftershock spatial patterns. We show that large earthquakes do not regularly repeat in time, but it is possible to achieve insights on the time until the next big shock from the percentage of aftershocks occurring inside the mainshock slip contour.

Local tsunamigenic sources in Greece, identified by pattern recognition

This study is an attempt to determine potential tsunamigenic morphostructural nodes in Greece using pattern recognition algorithms. The earthquakes that have produced local tsunamis in the region were confined to morphostructural nodes whose locations were found by morphostructural zoning. The recognition problem consisted in separating all nodes in the region into the tsunamigenic class and the non-tsunamigenic class based mainly on the geomorphologic parameters of the nodes. The data on tsunamigenic earthquakes in Greece for training the Cora-3 algorithm were taken from the GHTD global historical catalog of tsunamigenic events (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazard/tsu_db.shtml). The recognition procedure resulted in determining 27 tsunamigenic nodes, with most of these being situated in the southern tip of the Peloponnese Peninsula, as well as in the gulfs of Corinth and Patras. Three tsunamigenic nodes were identified in the area of the Malian Gulf on the Aegean coast of Greece. According to the relevant literature, most local tsunamis in Greece were initiated by submarine slides and slumps due to earthquakes. According to the characteristic geomorphologic features derived in this study, the tsunamigenic nodes are situated in settings of contrasting relief characterized by steep slopes. This favors submarine landslides when subjected to earthquake excitation. The results reported in this paper form a basis for developing a methodology to be used in long-term tsunami hazard assessment, supplying information on local potential tsunamigenic sources required for tsunami regionalization of coastal areas in Greece.

A performance-based approach to quantify atmospheric river flood risk

Abstract. Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are a class of meteorologic phenomena that cause significant precipitation and flooding on the US West Coast. This work presents a new Performance-based Atmospheric River Risk Analysis (PARRA) framework that adapts existing concepts from probabilistic risk analysis and performance-based engineering for application in the context of AR-driven fluvial flooding. The PARRA framework is a chain of physically based models that link the atmospheric forcings, hydrologic impacts, and economic consequences of AR-driven fluvial flood risk together at consistent “pinch points”. Organizing around these pinch points makes the framework modular, meaning that models between pinch points can be updated without affecting the rest of the model chain, and it produces a probabilistic result that quantifies the uncertainty in the underlying system states. The PARRA framework can produce results beyond analyses of individual scenario events and can look toward prospective assessment of events or system changes that have not been seen in the historic record. The utility of the PARRA framework is demonstrated through a series of analyses in Sonoma County, CA, USA. Individual component models are fitted and validated against a historic catalog of AR events occurring from 1987 to 2019. Comparing simulated results from these component model implementations against observed historic ARs highlights what we can learn about the drivers of extremeness in different flood events by taking a probabilistic perspective. The component models are then run in sequence to generate a first-of-its-kind AR flood loss exceedance curve for Sonoma County. The prospective capabilities of the PARRA framework are presented through the evaluation of a hypothetical mitigation action. Elevating 200 homes, selected based on their proximity to the Russian River, was sufficient to reduce the average annual loss by half. Although expected benefits were minimal for the smallest events in the stochastic record, the larger, more damaging ARs were expected to see loss reductions of approximately USD 50–75 million per event. These results indicate the potential of the PARRA framework to examine other changes to flood hazard, exposure, and vulnerability at the community level.

Paleoseismic evidence of the 1715 C.E earthquake on the Purgatorio Fault in Southern Peru: Implications for seismic hazard in subduction zones

Active faults in the forearc of southern Peru pose a poorly understood hazard to the region. The Purgatorio Fault is a 60 km-long fault that extends between Moquegua and Tacna that has hosted several scarp-forming earthquakes over the last 6 ka. We present new measurements of the fault scarp geomorphology along the Purgatorio Fault, and use dating of the stratigraphy within a new paleoseismic trench excavated across the fault to establish the chronology of scarp formation. We find that the most recent surface-rupturing earthquake on the Purgatorio Fault occurred sometime between 1630C.E and 1790C.E and had a moment magnitude (Mw) of ~7. We propose that this most recent surface-rupturing earthquake on the Purgatorio Fault was the 1715C.E earthquake recorded in the historical catalogue of the region, which was previously attributed to the megathrust offshore. Our results highlight the importance of establishing a paleoseismic record of onshore faults to differentiate between major megathrust and forearc earthquakes. Given the proximity of these shallow, onshore faults to coastal communities in Peru, the shallow earthquakes they generate may pose a severe, yet often overlooked, seismic hazard.

New synergies between the podcast and music industries: Spotify plays the rhythm

The aim of this article is to analyse the synergies established between the podcast industry and the music industry (mainly labels and publishers). To this end, it examined the strategies of majors and indies in the development of specific series and services, the acquisition of production companies and the establishment of agreements with the large platforms and advertisers and developed a taxonomy of the content generated by these companies. These strategies have several objectives that will be studied from the political economy of cultural and media industries point of view: the promotion of artists, the exploitation of the historical catalogue in a transmedia development that puts songs into circulation generating income from reproduction and public communication rights and, of course, the opening of new businesses that generate profits from the two fundamental income channels: data and advertising. Consequently, the music companies managing audio objects and generating contents that compete in the new paradigm.

Historical and global scale catalogue of diplurologists (1842-2019) and proturologists (1907-2020)

The diversity of scientists and their numbers of publications for Diplura and Protura are tabulated from 1842 to 2019 for Diplura, and from 1907 to 2020 for Protura. For Diplura, 450 scientists from 39 different countries published about 1170 works. For Protura, 423 scientists from 38 different countries published about 1300 works. For each author, nationality, number of publications and date of the first and last publications are given.