Earth and Planetary Science

A catalogue of forty-nine instrumentally-recorded earthquakes with magnitudes ≥ 7 in Taiwan from 1906 to date is compiled from regional and international catalogues and literature. Included also are seven historical earthquakes that occurred from 1792 to 1867. The earthquake magnitude is the surface-wave magnitude, M_s. The moment magnitude, M_w, is also evaluated either from M_s or obtained from related documents. Except for one event, M_w is smaller than or equal to M_s. There are the 'doublets', 'triplets', and ‘quadruplets’ in these earthquakes. The spatial distribution of epicenters shows that most of the events occurred in offshore eastern Taiwan and only a few inland events happened in western Taiwan. The shortest inter-occurrence time between two consecutive events is less than 1 day; while the longest one is 5742 days between No. 47 event and No. 48 event. The inter-occurrence time somewhat increases with time. The time series of earthquakes shows irregular recurrence behavior with aperiodicity, fractality, and a weak memory effect. The damage produced by earthquakes is much higher from inland events (mainly in western Taiwan) than from offshore ones.