Abstract
We present a new approach for re-estimating an epicenter of historical earthquake using the spatial distribution of intensity data. We use macroseismic data related to the 1927 Jericho earthquake since this is the first strong earthquake recorded by modern seismographs and is also well documented by historical evidence and reports. The epicenter is located in two sequential steps: (1) Correction of previously-evaluated seismic intensities in accordance with the local site-attributes: construction quality, topographic slope, groundwater level, and surface geology; (2) Spatial correlation of these intensities with a logarithmic variant of the epicentral distance. The resulted location (approximated to 35.5°/31.8°) is consistent with the seismogram-based location calculated by Avni et al. (2002) and also of Ben Menahem et al. (1976) with a spatial error of 50. km. The proposed method suggests an additional approach to the formers based mainly upon spatial analysis of intensity data.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 19-29 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Journal of Applied Geophysics |
Volume | 82 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 2012 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank Prof. Izhak Bennenson, the Geography department at Tel Aviv University and Dr. Ron Avni from Ben Gurion University for their guidance and advice. We also thank Dr. Amichai Sneh, Dr. John Hall, and Mr. Hayim Hemo of the Geological Survey of Israel for providing data. We highly appreciate the constructive reviews by an anonymous journal referee and by Prof. Jeremy Zechar, which significantly improved the manuscript. Finally, we thank the Geological Survey of Israel and the Department of Geography at the Hebrew University for providing supportive environment. The research was partly funded by the Israel Science Foundation grant #12/2003 to S. Marco.
Keywords
- 1927
- Attenuation relation
- Dead Sea Fault
- Earthquakes
- Epicenter
- Intensity
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Geophysics