A comprehensive earthquake catalogue for the Iranian Plateau (400 B.C. to December 31, 2018)

We provide a comprehensive earthquake catalogue for Iran that is suitable for detailed seismological analysis and seismic hazard assessment. Based on the work by (Mousavi-Bafrouei et al. Ann Geophys 57:S0653, 2014) and new sources of data, we extend the uniform Iranian earthquake catalogue to include events from fourth century B.C. to December 31, 2018. Conversion relationships between moment magnitude (Mw) and body wave, surface wave, Nuttli and local magnitudes are presented and used to estimate Mw based on a priority system. The updated earthquake catalogue includes 25,937 earthquakes with Mw between 2.6 and 8.1. Catalogue declustering, using the method of conjugate windows, results in 1772 clusters with 17,123 events with Mw between 2.9 and 8.1. We also evaluate magnitude of completeness and seismicity parameters including the Gutenberg-Richter b-value, mean annual seismic activity rate and maximum expected magnitude in five seismotectonic units. Overall, the Zagros unit has the highest b-value among all units, whereas the Makran unit shows the lowest b-value indicating possibility of the largest range of magnitudes in the region.