A comprehensive quantification of error location uncertainties for the French earthquake catalog

Locating earthquakes has been a longterm problem in seismology that depends on multiple parameters like station density and spacing, azimuthal gap, velocity models, and phase pick precision. Here, we analyze the current state of the earthquake French catalog for the time period between 2010 until 2018, which we divide into different regions: the Alps, Massif Central, the West, the Pyrenees, the Grand-East and the North. We perform multiple location synthetic tests using as benchmark the earthquake catalog and the evolution of the French seismic network to quantify the improvements in 1) earthquake location through time and 2) the error locations and their uncertainties. For such endeavors, we use NonLinLoc to perform the synthetic tests varying, as input, the stations, the number of stations and phase picks, 1D velocity models and 3D velocity models, and to understand the changes in 1) earthquake hypocenters, 2) ellipsoidal errors and 3) posterior density functions. Then, we relocate the entire catalog using NonLinLoc including 3D velocity models (where available) and compare the hypocentral location differences when we relocate the catalog with 1D velocity models. Additionally, we estimate a quality factor for each of the located earthquakes and report the changes on the quality factor with the temporal evolution of the national seismic network. The resulting catalog and its associated error location will help future seismic hazard estimations in the Metropolitan French area.