Unified local magnitude scale for earthquakes of south Balkan area

A homogeneous earthquake catalog spanning 1964-1995 for the southern Balkan area is presented, by expressing the size of the earthquakes in a unified local magnitude scale. The strategy followed to produce this catalog is als o presented. Local magnitudes calculated by six Balkan seismological center s (ATH, THE, ISK, TIR, TTG, SKO) have been used in order to obtain relation s between the estimated M-L values from the creek seismological centers (AT H and THE) and the remaining four Balkan stations. Since it was found that local magnitudes estimated by ATH and THE are almost identical, they have b een used as one data set so as to correlate with the data of each one of th e remaining four seismological stations. Based on the proposed relations, a unified local magnitude, M-LGR is given for each earthquake of the regiona l catalog. A published scaling relation between the M-L values from ATH and THE networks and the corresponding seismic moment magnitude, M-w, was used in combination with the above relations, in order to enable the conversion of any M-L, value from any station into M-w. The catalog completeness has been checked and the b-value has been calculated for the complete data samp le.