Seismicity in the Northern Rhine Area (1995–2018)

Since the mid-1990s, the local seismic network of the University of Cologne has produced digital seismograms. The data all underwent a daily routine processing. For this study, we re-processed data of almost a quarter century of seismicity in the Northern Rhine Area (NRA), including the Lower Rhine Embayment (LRE) and the Eifel Mountain region (EMR). This effort included refined discrimination between tectonic earthquakes, mine-induced events, and quarry blasts. While routine processing comprised the determination of local magnitude M L , in the course of this study, source spectra-based estimates for moment magnitude M W for 1332 earthquakes were calculated. The resulting relation between M L and M W agrees well with the theory of an M L ∝ 1.5 M W dependency at magnitudes below 3. By applying Gutenberg-Richter relation, the b -value for M L was less (0.82) than M W (1.03). Fault plane solutions for 66 earthquakes confirm the previously published N118° E direction of maximum horizontal stress in the NRA. Comparison of the seismicity with recently published Global Positioning System–based deformation data of the crust shows that the largest seismic activity during the observation period in the LRE occurred in the region with the highest dilatation rates. The stress directions agree well with the trend of major faults, and declining seismicity from south to north correlates with decreasing strain rates. In the EMR, earthquakes concentrate at the fringes of the area with corresponding the largest uplift.