Earthquakes of 1838 and 1839 in the Slovene Hills (Slovenia)-Međimurje (Croatia) area

Analyses of available data (newspaper reports, historical and church chronicles, chronical earthquake overviews, travel books, monographies, research papers, etc.) on effects of the earthquakes that shook the greater Ormož area at the Slovenian-Croatian border in the 1838 and 1839 revealed that one of them, recorded in a number of regional and global catalogues, is in fact a fake - the earthquake of 26 August 1838 never happened. This error creeped into various reports and studies, and then into many relevant catalogues, so this event should by systematically erased from the catalogues used to estimate seismicity rates in the neighbourhoods of north-western Croatia, north-eastern Slovenia, and south-western Hungary.Regarding the earthquake of 31 July 1838, we used important new sources of information that have not been consulted in any previous study. This made inversion of macroseismic parameters more robust. Our estimates of the macroseismic moment magnitude (Mwm = 4.8) is mostly higher than the values reported in the available catalogues. Reliable information on the effects of the smaller event of 22 March 1839 were found for two localities only, so its epicentre was placed into the town of Ormož where the maximum intensity was observed. Its estimated moment magnitude (Mwm) is close to the median of values found in the six consulted catalogues that listed this event.The macroseismic epicentre of the 1838 earthquake lies close to the junction of surface traces of the Donat strike-slip fault and the reverse Čakovec fault. Based on their assumed geometry and the location of the macroseismic hypocentre, we give slight preference to the Donat fault as the seismogenic source.

Visualization of macroseismic parameters during examination of epicentral zones of strong earthquakes

The article discusses the fragile destruction of building materials during strong earthquakes, the features of the macroseismic effect of cracking expressed in the protective coatings of buildings; it is recommended to optimize the composition based on polymer by composition that increases the crack resistance of plaster solutions. In particular, the visualization of macroseismic parameters is given on the example of the survey of the epicentral zones of the Tashkent (2008), Cannes (2011) and Marzhanbulak (2013) strong earthquakes that occurred in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Possible directions of crack development and density of their distribution over the macroseismic area are analyzed. It was revealed that the vulnerability to micro-destruction of types of protective materials is proportional to the seismic intensity and is mainly due to the intensity of seismic vibrations.

Do seismologists agree upon epicentre determination from macroseismic data? A survey of ESC Working Group ' Macroseismology'

In contrast to the case of instrumental data, the procedures for epicentral parameter determination (coordinates and I0) from macroseismic data are not very well established. Although there are some "rules", upon which most seismologists agree (centre of the isoseismal of largest degree, and so on), the practical application of, such rules displays many problems. Therefore, it is commonly seismologists' practice to find their own pro cedures and solutions; this is particularly evident in the more complicated cases, Such as offshore epicentres or, as in many cases of historical earthquakes, poor sets of data. One of the major consequences is that parametric catalogues are not homogeneous with respect to macroseismic parameters; moreover, merging catalogues compiled according to different criteria can introduce high noise in any catalogue built in such a way. In order to survey the current practice of epicentre determination from macroseismic data in Europe, a set of cases was distributed to the participants of the first meeting of the ESC WG "Macroseismology". A comparison of the 15 sets of results provided by 16 authors, who gave their own solutions and the explanation., of the adopted procedures is given, showing that in some cases the ideas and results are rather distant.