A catalog of historical earthquakes in China compiled from recent Chinese publications

abstract A catalog of historical earthquakes in China from 1177 B.C. to 1899 A.D. has been compiled in a form suitable for computers. The data include the date, epicenter, magnitude, and epicentral intensity of the earthquake as well as the province where the earthquake occurred. The source materials are publications in Chinese of the Institute of Geophysics, Academia Sinica. Some of the historical events are evidently related to large faults that are easily discernible from satellite images. Comparing the historical seismicity map to epicenters located by the World Wide Standardized Seismograph Network stations since 1962, we may see the influence of population distribution on the historical data.