GFZ German research centre for geo sciences

SHEEC 1900-2006

The SHARE European Earthquake Catalogue (SHEEC) 1900-2006 has been compiled by GFZ Potsdam in the frame of an independant project and represents a temporal and spatial excerpt of "The European-Mediterranean Earthquake Catalogue" (EMEC) for the last millennium (Grünthal & Wahlström, 2012) with a few modifications, which are described in Grünthal et al. (2013).

The SHARE European Earthquake Catalogue (SHEEC) 1000-1899 was compiled under the coordination of INGV, Milan. It  builds on the data contained in AHEAD (Archive of Historical Earthquake Data) and with the methodology developed in the frame of the I3, EC project "Network of Research Infrastructures for European Seismology" (NERIES), module NA4.
The catalogue (SHEEC) 1000-1899 and the Greek part of 1900-2006 have been partially supported by the EC 7th framework programme project SHARE.

The SHARE European Earthquake Catalogue (SHEEC) 1900-2006 is basically an excerpt of the European-Mediterranean Earthquake Catalogue (EMEC) by Grünthal & Wahlström (2012), the latter covering also historical time in a larger area. Minor differences between SHEEC and EMEC in this time period are described by Grünthal et al. (2013). In both catalogues., the magnitudes threshold is Mw = 3.5 for earthquake locations at latitudes ≥ 44°N and Mw = 4.0 at latitudes < 44°N.

The parameters of the catalogue have been determined by:

  • special algorithms to select one out of several possible focal parameter solutions - location, time, depth (optional), Mw magnitude, and intensity - if given by different sources
  • transformation equations to calculate Mw, if not original, from other magnitude types according to a strict hierarchy
  • routines to eliminate fake and other non-tectonic events, and to avoid duplicates

A more detailed description is given by Grünthal & Wahlström (2012).


Reference of the SHEEC 1900-2006 version:

Grünthal, G., Wahlström, R., Stromeyer, D.  (2013): The SHARE European Earthquake Catalogue (SHEEC) for the time period 1900-2006 and its comparison to European-Mediterranean Earthquake Catalogue (EMEC). Journal of Seismology 17(4): 1339-1344

back to top of main content