Speaker
Ms
Elisabeth Knuts
(ROB)
Description
Earthquake catalogue for the XIXth century from the Lower Rhine Embayment to the North Sea: summary and results.
Knuts Elisabeth (1), Camelbeeck Thierry (1), Hinzen Klaus-G. (2), Dost Bernard (3) and Pierre Alexandre (1)
(1) Royal Observatory of Belgium
(2) Seismological Station Bensberg, Cologne University
(3) Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI)
The Royal Observatory of Belgium, Cologne University and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) are conducting since 5 years a specific research to establish a reliable earthquake catalogue for the XIXth century based on already known original documents but also on new ones systematically searched for and retrieved from various archives. The transfrontier and multilingual study area reaches from the Lower Rhine Embayment to the North Sea. In parallel a thesis from the University of Liège on the earthquakes felt in Belgium since 1795 until 1911 are studying 28 events on the seismological and historical point of view. Among them the most important events of the century: 1828-02-23; 1828-12-03; 1878-08-26 and 1881-11-18.
One of the most important discovery was done at the occasion of the 3rd December 1828 earthquake: the first official surveys conducted after earthquakes in our regions. They was sent out by the Prussian government to the commissioners and burgomasters of various districts. We collected a significant amount of new material demonstrating that this kind of survey was routinely utilized on a large scale in additional instances of felt earthquakes by the Prussian authorities and that it continued up to the end of the XIXth century. This discovery prove the importance of new historical research on earthquakes to confirm or not some famous works written by previous scientists and revise intensities and epicentre of some events.
Primary author
Ms
Elisabeth Knuts
(ROB)
Co-authors
Prof.
Klaus-G. Hinzen
(Cologne University)
Thierry Camelbeeck
(Royal Observatory of Belgium)
