catalogo de terremotos para america del sur catalog of earthquakes ...

Introducti on
97
SOUTH AMERICAN HYPOCENTER AND INTENSITY CATALOGS
By
Bonny L. Askew and S. T. Algermissen
U.S. Geological Survey
Denver, Colorado 80225
It has been recognized for some time that a unified catalog of earthquake
parameters for South America is essential for progress in many areas of
seismological research. Tfils is particularly true for regional studies of
seismicity, seismotectonics, and the evaluation of seismic hazards. National
catalogs of some of the countries in South America have been available for a
number of years and many of these contain data as far back as the 16th
century. The quality and scope of the available national catalogs, however,
vary from country to country. The "Program for the Mitigation of Earthquake
Effects in the Andean Region" (known as project SISRA) provided an
unparalleled and perhaps essential framework for an effort to unify the
various regional and national earthquake catalogs available. The decision was
made early in the project to concentrate work on hypocenter parameters of the
earthquakes and on cataloging the distrihut. uf intensity. The essential,
and clearly the most important, work on the hypocenter and intensity catalogs
was done by a group of national workers within each country. They revised,
edited, and integrated the variety of seismicity data available for each
country. They then entered the data into a format that had been agreed to by
the national representatives from each of the countries. The resulting
national catalogs were then reviewed and approved by the national coordinator
for the catalogs. Dr. Leonidas Ocola of the Geophysical Institute of Peru
served as the overall coordinator for the earthquake hypocenter and intensity