The Philippine historical earthquake catalog: Its development, current state and future directions

Abstract

This report will trace the development of the historical earthquake catalog of the Philippines, assess its present state and recommend future research directions. The current Philippine historical earthquake catalog is culled from various catalogs, both global and local, that were developed since the first Philippine catalog by Perrey was published in 1860. While early global catalogs gave simple mention of earthquakes in the Philippines, more focused earthquake catalogs about the Philippines gave more explicit descriptions of earthquake accounts and adopted descriptions by local historians. Over the years, various historians and seismologists continued to compile their catalogs whose contents depended on the author's perspectives and purposes. These works varied from simple listings to others including detailed descriptions. It was only recently that an attempt made to parameterize the magnitudes and epicenters of Philippine historical earthquakes using magnitude-felt area relations was done. A more detailed catalog, however, is now underway that will show details of intensity distribution for each significant historical earthquake. By comparing the historical catalog with the recent catalog and assuming that the recent catalog is complete, we find that there are still a substantial amount of historical earthquakes that needs to be reviewed and located. Possible sources of new information are local libraries, museums and archives in the Philippines, Spain and other Southeast Asian countries to which the country was in contact with during historical times.