Past and Future of Historical Seismicity Studies in France - Historical Seismology: Interdisciplinary Studies of Past and Recent Earthquakes - page 130

systematic investigation of contemporary French earthquakes by means of seismic
stations, macroseismic enquiries and questionnaires, and collection of all available
documents, whether letters or newspaper articles, from 1909 to 1920 (Vogt 2003;
Frechet 2007b). After the damaging earthquake in Provence 1909, more than 4200
questionnaires of the 4500 sent were received and processed (Angot 1910). We do
not know whether these questionnaires survived. Some later questionnaires are now
in the IPGS archives, particularly for the 1911 Swabian Jura earthquake of which
we discovered recently with Jean Vogt the complete survey folder.
In 1921, the Service Sismologique was transferred to the newly created Institut de
Physique du Globe de Strasbourg (IPGS), and was given the name Bureau Central
Sismologique Fran¸ais (BCSF). Under the direction of Edmond Rothe (from 1921
to 1942) and of his son Jean-Pierre Rothe (from 1943 to 1977), the so-called Rothe
catalogue of French historical seismicity was developed, based largely on Perrey's
and Montessus de Ballore's work, for older earthquakes, and on the continuation of
macroseismic surveys for contemporary events.
Edmond Rothe also collected many archive documents with the collaboration
of French libraries and archive depositories (principally Archives departementales ).
He sought the collaboration of local learned figures and societies, focussing his
requests on the period 1872-1919, i.e. the post-Perrey and pre-BCSF period (Rothe
1927). Guillaume Bigourdan had made a similar request 20 years earlier (Bigourdan
1908), but we have not yet found trace of his catalogue. On the whole between 1921
and 1975, little progress was made in the study of historical earthquakes. Edmond
Rothe and Jean-Pierre Rothe relied mainly on previous catalogues. Edmond Rothe
published in 1926 a small catalogue that is actually the first catalogue of French
historical earthquakes (Rothe 1926). Jean-Pierre Rothe published three regional cat-
alogues, for the Western Alps, the Rhine Graben, and Algeria.
Contemporaneous earthquakes were studied by means of macroseismic ques-
tionnaires and instrumental studies. Edmond Rothe and his collaborators published
annual catalogues of earthquakes in France and its colonies between 1919 and 1930
in the Annuaire de l'Institut de Physique du Globe ; Jean-Pierre Rothe, Joseph La-
coste, and other collaborators continued the catalogues for the years 1931-1939
in the same Annuaire (which changed name to Annales de l'Institut de Physique
du Globe in 1936). From 1940 on, until the year 1970 J.-P. Rothe published three
decennial catalogues, in the same Annales , in collaboration with N. Dechevoy. His
last catalogue, for the years 1971-1977, appeared in 1983 in the IPGS series Ob-
servations Sismologiques . After 1977, the macroseismic enquiries were in charge of
BRGM, until 1986. Since 1987, they are again carried out by BCSF.
2.4 The Seismo-Tectonic Project (Projet Sismotectonique)
In 1975, the concern about safety of the nuclear industry gave birth to the French
Seismo-Tectonic Mapping Project ( Projet de la Carte Sismotectonique de la France )
led by Jean Vogt until 1984. The Projet Sismotectonique was a common initiative of