The Portuguese National Seismic Network—Products and Services

Abstract

Portugal, located in the southwest region of the Eurasian plate, has been affected by several destructive earthquakes throughout its history, the most well-known being the 1755 Great Lisbon earthquake. The seismicity of the territory, both in the mainland and in the Azores and Madeira islands, has prompted the continuous development of seismic monitoring, from the first known macroseismic inquiry, following the 1755 Great Lisbon earthquake, to the current state-of-the-art seismic network. Once scattered in separate efforts, at present, most seismic stations in Portugal relay its data to a common data center, at Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera, where data are automatically processed for the downstream generation of both manually revised and automatically generated products and services. In this article, we summarize the evolution of the permanent seismic network, its current status, the products and services that are publicly available, a recent effort of rapid deployment of a dense network following a mainshock, and state-of-the-art ocean-bottom seismometer developments.

Imaging the crust and uppermost mantle structure of Portugal (West Iberia) with seismic ambient noise

“…Data was recorded continuously at 40, 50, 80 and 100 samples per second. More detailed information on the permanent networks and on the WILAS temporary network (Dias et al 2010) can be found in Carrilho et al (2021) and Custódio et al (2014). The DOCTAR deployment is described in Matos et al (2018).…”

Portuguese European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and Water Column Observatory Initiative

“…The two EGIM to be installed in these observatories have already been submitted to factory acceptance tests and sea acceptance tests during 2021 being the deployment scheduled for mid 2022. Underwater acoustics, that can also provide cost-efficient information for the follow up of marine mammal population dynamics, the characterization of fish reproduction changes, the understanding of adverse meteo-oceanographic conditions, can also lead to the identification of low-energy seismic events that will be used to support the operation and development of the tsunami and seismic early warning systems, under the responsibility of IPMA (Carrilho et al, 2021). Focus will be given to a better understanding of seismic and geological risk sources.…”

The Contribution of Submarine Optical Fiber Telecom Cables to the Monitoring of Earthquakes and Tsunamis in the NE Atlantic

“…IPMA (Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera) is the Portuguese Agency responsible for earthquake and tsunami monitoring and it has the responsibility to inform authorities as fast as possible on occurring earthquakes and possible tsunamis. For this purpose, IPMA is collecting seismic data from a dense network, exclusively based on land stations, many of them available through international cooperation (Figure 3) (Carrilho et al, 2021). Figure 3 also shows the FIGURE 2 | Sketch location of the submarine telecom cables in operation at the Azores archipelago (yellow and red lines) overlaying the shaded bathymetry map (Smith and Sandwell, 1997).…”