The dataset covers the time span from January 1 to December 31, 1988. It encompasses three classes of seismic events recorded on the island of Vulcano, in Italy. Here the local seismicity has varying origins and characteristics, from seismic events related to fluid dynamics to brittle-failure earthquakes (Falsaperla and Neri, 1986). The dataset sheds light on three classes of signals with increasing seismic energy release, which were recorded before, during, and after a period of volcanic unrest in August 1988 (e.g., Chiodini et al., 1992; Falsaperla, 2021).
For the first class, the dataset provides the hourly occurrence frequency of the local seismic events (mostly microshocks of volcanic origin) that exceeded an amplitude threshold (20 mm) on the paper seismograms of a reference station. The reference station for the counting (named VCR) was close to a large fumarole field.
For the second class, the dataset gives the hourly occurrence frequency of seismic events with origin within about 10 km around La Fossa crater on the island of Vulcano. These events were recorded at at least three stations of the permanent seismic network of the Aeolian Islands. For the interested reader, Falsaperla (2021) provides a catalogue of the hypocenter location for the local earthquakes with magnitude between 1.8 and 2.5, recorded from July to September 1988. Many of these earthquakes were related to the aforementioned volcanic unrest.
For the third class of events, the dataset lists the earthquakes with magnitude greater than 2.5, located within a radius of 15 km from the VCR station. For each earthquake the catalogue provides the hypocentral parameters (UTC origin time, latitude, longitude, and depth in kilometers), duration magnitude, energy (using the magnitude–energy relationship computed for Italian earthquakes by Di Filippo and Marcelli, 1950), and strain release.
Acknowledgments
A group of people actively participated to the seismic monitoring of the Aeolian Islands in the 1980s, contributing in various forms to the acquisition of information. The members of this group were staff of Istituto Internazionale di Vulcanologia of the Italian Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR). In addition to the listed contributors of the dataset, thanks to Professor Antonio Montalto, together with the technicians Angelino Biviano, Mario Marturano, and Salvatore Velardita.
