A catalogue of seismicity in Greece and the adjacent areas for the twentieth century Paul W. Burton a, * , Yebang Xu a , Changyuan Qin a , G-Akis Tselentis b , Ethimios Sokos b a School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom b Seismology Laboratory, University of Patras, Rio 261 10 Greece Received 20 December 2001; received in revised form 7 January 2002; accepted 9 March 2004 Available online 19 August 2004 Abstract A magnitude homogeneous earthquake catalogue spanning the twentieth century has been assembled for Greece and adjacent areas. Data assemblage had to consider all of the common magnitude scales: M W , M S , m b , and M L (including M L (ATH) of the National Observatory of Athens (NOA)). Fourteen different correlation equations between magnitude scales were considered in order to approach magnitude homogeneity in the final catalogue. This catalogue contains an estimate of both M W and M S , for each earthquake, and the actual reported values of m b , M S , M W , and M L . The final catalogue includes 5198 earthquakes after having been truncated at 4 M W to eliminate large numbers of patchily reported microearthquakes. These 5198 earthquakes during 1900–1999 are within the area 33–438N, 18–30.998E, focal depths 1.0–215 km, and magnitude range 4.0VM W V7.7. The surface wave magnitude M S is always estimated for each earthquake to facilitate application of the catalogue to seismic hazard assessment, since seismic attenuation laws are more often expressed in terms of M S rather than M W . Alongside this new catalogue, the data of Papazachos and Papazachou for the period 550 BC–1899 then provide a full picture of the known seismicity of Greece. D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Earthquakes; Seismicity; Magnitude; Seismic hazard; Greece 1. Introduction Greece is the country of highest seismicity in Europe and as such, a homogeneous account of its earthquake record and history is of great interest. The interest in creating a homogeneous earthquake cata- logue is not merely academic but of great practical concern when applied to underpin analyses of seismic hazard and ensuing seismic risk, and for seismic zonation and land use regulation and planning. Many high quality and relatively uniform data have accu- mulated since 1964 through the International Seismo- logical Centre (ISC) that supplements earlier, less clear periods. The task of earthquake catalogue compilation is an ongoing research task in which 0040-1951/$ - see front matter D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tecto.2004.03.020 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 1603 592982; fax: +44 1603 507719. E-mail addresses: p.burton@uea.ac.uk (P.W. Burton)8 tselenti@upatras.gr (G.-A. Tselentis). Tectonophysics 390 (2004) 117–127 www.elsevier.com/locate/tecto