The EMCA Area Source model for Central Asia is online
The area sources for Central Asia within the EMCA model are defined by considering the pattern of crustal seismicity down to 50 km depth. Tectonic and geological information, such as the position and strike distribution of known faults, have also been taken into account when available.
In order to obtain a robust estimation of the necessary parameters for PSHA derived by the statistical analysis of the seismicity, due to the scarcity of data in some of the areas covered by the model, super zones are introduced. These super zones are defined by combining area sources based on similarities in their tectonic regime, and taking into account local expert’s judgments.
The super zones are used to estimate:
(1) the completeness time of the earthquake catalogue,
(2) the depth distribution of seismicity,
(3) the tectonic regime through focal mechanisms analysis,
(4) the maximum magnitude and
(5) the b values via the GR relationship.
The earthquake catalogue for focal mechanism is extracted from the Harvard Global Centroid Moment Tensor Catalog (Ekström and Nettles, 2013). The Boore et al. (1997) convention is used for the classification of the focal mechanism.
The dataset is freely available for scientific use and can be downloaded here.
