J Seismol (2018) 22:1113–1126

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-018-9754-9

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Angola seismicity
Francisco António Pereira Neto & George Sand França & Cristobal Condori & Giuliano Sant’Anna
Marotta & Cristiano Naibert Chimpliganond

Received: 24 January 2017 / Accepted: 6 May 2018 / Published online: 30 May 2018
# Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract This work describes the development of the
Angolan earthquake catalog and seismicity distribution
in the Southwestern African Plate, in Angola. This
region is one of the least seismically active, even for
stable continental regions (SCRs) in the world. The
maximum known earthquake had a magnitude of 6.0
Ms, while events with magnitudes of 4.5 have return
period of about 10 years. Events with magnitude 5 and
above occur with return period of about 20 years. Five
seismic zones can be confirmed in Angola, within and
along craton edges and in the sedimentary basins includ-
ing offshore. Overall, the exposed cratonic regions tend
to have more earthquakes compared to other regions
such as sedimentary basins. Earthquakes tend to occur
in Archaic rocks, especially inside preexisting weakness
zones and in tectonic-magmatic reactivation zones of
Mesozoic and Meso-Cenozoic, associated with the in-
stallation of a wide variety of intrusive rocks, strongly
marked by intense tectonism. This fact can be explained
by the models of preexisting weakness zones and stress
concentration near intersecting structures. The Angolan
F. A. P. Neto : G. S. França (*) : C. Condori :
G. Sant’Anna Marotta : C. N. Chimpliganond
Observatório Sismológico da Universidade de Brasília, Brasília,
Brazil
e-mail: georgesand@unb.br
F. A. P. Neto
Gabinete de Aproveitamento do Médio Kwanza (GAMEK),
Luanda, Angola
C. Condori
Instituto Geofísico del Perú, Ciencias de la Tierra Sólida, Lima,
Peru
passive margin is also a new region where seismic
activity occurs. Although clear differences are found
between different areas along the passive margin, in
the middle near Porto Amboim city, seismic activity is
more frequent compared with northwestern and south-
western regions.
Keywords Intraplate . Sedimentary basin . Angola
earthquakes . Stable continental regions
1 Introduction
The world interest in Seismology is more pronounced in
regions where seismic activity is more concentrated
(e.g., Ring of Fire, about 90% of the world earthquakes
occur there; USGS 2018). These regions are important
global economic poles such as California and Japan.
Thus, most efforts and resources in Seismology are used
to understand the seismic activity in these regions, called
interplate regions.
Although less frequent, intraplate earthquakes (5% of
the global average, Talwani, 2014) are also important.
The earthquakes that occurred in just over a month
between December 1811 and February 1812, in New
Madrid, Missouri, central USA located away from the
plate tectonic boundaries, in an area considered a stable
continental region (SCR) (Johnston et al. 1994), reached
maximum possible intensity levels of XII according to
the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale and served as the
landmark for the development of intraplate seismicity

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1114
studies (Sbar and Sykes 1973; Sykes 1978; Johnston
1989; Johnston and Kanter 1990).
With technological advances in the seismology field
in particular and geophysics in general, seismograph
station density increased considerably and improved
seismic monitoring worldwide. Thus, Angola despite
being located in a very stable region, even for intraplate
regions, and having a low seismic hazard, cannot con-
tinue alien to this world reality.
This work proposes to confirm the main seismic
zones defined by Moreira (1968) and identify new seis-
mic zones using the compilation of macroseismic data
from 1943 to October 2014, provided by the Instituto
Nacional de Meteorologia e Geofísica (INAMET). In
addition, we compiled instrumental data from interna-
tional seismic bulletins (i.e., International Seismological
Centre (ISC) and US Geological Survey (USGS)), from
1914 to October, 2014. Additional data was obtained by
processing two recent events recorded by the new seis-
mic network installed around the Capanda reservoir
dam. Thus, we hope that this work can be a motivating
factor for further studies of Angola seismicity. Only
then, the knowledge and understanding of the fault
mechanism in each zone will be improved.
2 Geology
The craton is the major crustal province in Angolan
tectonics. The cratons are the oldest rocks, with portions
of Pangea fragments, aged more than 1400 m.y. Howev-
er, for a prolonged period, the relief has undergone
significant changes, and most of the older rocks were
covered by younger ones (explanatory notes are found in
the Angola geological map scale 1:1,000,000, 1989—
ENAGM). The craton division is based on the analysis of
the geological formation characteristics and the succes-
sion of structural Pre-Cambrian and Phanerozoic litho-
logical complexes. The major tectonic-magmatic cycles
occurring in Angola correspond to the intervals of the
Upper and Lower Archaic (ENAGM).
The Lower Archaic (> 3000 m.y.) is essentially rep-
resented by gneisses and biotitic plagiogneisses, biotitic
hornblendite with biotitic and garnet schists appearing
in subordinate biotitic, and bi-micaceous amphibolite,
amphibolite, quartzite, and leptite.
The Upper Archaic (2.900–2.600 m.y.) is essentially
represented by metasedimentary rocks with amphibolite
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J Seismol (2018) 22:1113–1126
facies of metamorphism, epidote-amphibolite, and
green shales.
Therefore, in the Angolan part of the African plat-
form, two structural levels stand out clearly (Fig. 1):
1. Lower, the crystalline shield (basement).
2. Upper, the coverage of the platform, consisting of
complexes of the Late Proterozoic, Paleozoic, Me-
sozoic, and Cenozoic.
Thus, in Angola, the following major structural tec-
tonic elements were defined (Fig. 1):
Basement outcrops
(a) Maiombe Shield (Maiombe craton) (2 in Fig. 1).
(b) Angola Shield (Angola craton) (1 in Fig. 1).
(c) Cassai Shield (Cassai craton) (3 in Fig. 1).
(d) Bangwelo Shield (Bangwelo craton) (4 in Fig. 1).
(e) Kwanza Horst (Fig. 1).
(f) Relatively small outcrops of crystalline rocks in
northern and southwestern Angola.
(g) Structures of the Upper Proterozoic Shield, green-
stone belts, and blocks of primitive continental crust.
Structures of platform coverage
(a) Structures of the early Mesozoic–Cenozoic (<
230 m.y.)
& Congo Sedimentary Basin.
& Kwanza Sedimentary Basin.
(b) Tectonic-magmatic reactivation of the platform
zones
& Of Late Riphean, basic magmatism, alkaline, and
acid intrusion.
& Of Mesozoic, a wide variety of intrusive rocks of
alkaline-ultrabasic, basic and alkaline composition,
kimberlite, and carbonatite;
& Of Meso-Cenozoic, basalt, dolerite, granite porphy-
ries, and rhyolite intrusions.
2.1 Evolution of the Angola and South Atlantic Rifted
Margins
During the Mesozoic and Cenozoic, the tectonic evolu-
tion in its sub-equatorial Angola South Atlantic margin
setting (Fig. 2) resulted from the plate-tectonic events that
caused the early Cretaceous rifting of Gondwanaland and
J Seismol (2018) 22:1113–1126
Fig. 1 The main geological provinces in Angola. Numbers denote
the cratonic areas: Angola craton (1), Maiombe craton (2), Cassai
craton (3), Bangweulo craton (4); intracratonic basins: Congo
Basin (CNG), Kwanza Basin (KWZ), Zambeze Basin (ZBE),
led to the separation of Africa and South America in the
medial Cretaceous and the subsequent progressive wid-
ening of the South Atlantic by plate accretion that con-
tinues today (Sibuet et al. 1984; Schlumberger 1991;
Brandão 2003).
According to Schlumberger (1991), the opening of
the South Atlantic is well-documented and constrained
by fracture zones defined from the Seasat data and
magnetic anomalies. The opening, south, and north of
the Walvis Ridge (Fig. 2) began approximately at M9
(129 m.y.) and M0 (118 m.y.) times, respectively. The
plate torsional rigidity and compatibility demand that
sea rift floor spreading by oceanic plate accretion south
of the Walvis Ridge, from M9 to M0 times, be accom-
panied by extension of the continental lithosphere north
of the Walvis Ridge along the Angolan and Brazilian
margins, which caused the Neocomian non-marine
rift basins. During this phase, the South America/
Africa separation was taken up to the north by exten-
sion along the Benue trough in Nigeria. At M0 (ear-
liest Aptian) times, oceanic plate accretion began
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1115
Cuando Basin (CDO), Cubango Basin (CGO), Kwanhama Basin
(KHM), Cunene Basin (CNE), Namibe Basin (NBE). Basement
outcrop within intracratonic basin; gray color denote passive mar-
gin between coastal line and the 2000-m bathymetry
north of the Walvis Ridge between Angola and Brazil
(Schlumberger 1991).
Angola’s rifted continental margin synchronously
subsided during its post-rift thermal phase as the
boundary conduction layer thickened. Flexural cou-
pling between the subsiding oceanic Angola Basin
and slower subsiding rifted continental margin caused
post-Aptian westward flexural tilting of the Angola
margin to generate a westward thickening wedge of
Cretaceous and Cenozoic sediments (Schlumberger
1991).
The South Atlantic Ocean shows a substantial de-
parture from the subsidence pattern typical of most of
the world’s oceans. The Angola Basin is systemati-
cally shallower than the global average so that ocean-
ic crust of 100 m.y. is about 0.5 km shallower than
normal (Schlumberger 1991). This appears to be typ-
ical of the tectonic behavior of the African plate
which, nowadays, has a higher regional average ele-
vation than other continents. Actually, intraplate
earthquakes cluster mainly inside the African
1116 J Seismol (2018) 22:1113–1126

Fig. 2 Tectonic reconstruction of

the sedimentary basins in the pre-
drift configuration. Green areas
represent basins. Red lines are the
transform-rifted faults.
(Figure taken from Mohriak
(2003))

continental crust for reasons related to lower vertical-
ly integrated strength of the lithosphere than oceanic
lithosphere (Schlumberger 1991).
The broad tectonic evolutionary framework, inside
the Angolan margin, may be arranged in eight sequen-
tial phases, which are based upon the relationship be-
tween the nature and rate of Africa/South America plate
separation, sea-level change, and the tectonic geometry
of the Brazilian and Angolan continental margins.
Phases I and II may be termed the pre-Rift phase when
Africa and South America formed a continuous conti-
nental land mass, phase III, the rift phase, and phases IV
to VIII, the post-rift phases.
According to Sibuet et al. (1984), tectonostratigraphic
units are defined based on seismic data and Deep Sea
Drilling Project holes drilled in the passive continental
margins. These have been related to three main evolution
stages of the continental margins:
I. The pre-rift sequence, which corresponds to the
continental basement, but may include volcanic
and sedimentary sequences deposited before the
tensional movements resulting in the formation of
the continental margin.
II. The syn-rift sequence, related to strong tectonics,
corresponds to the rifting phase. The duration of the

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J Seismol (2018) 22:1113–1126
rifting phase is from 20 to 40 m.y., and the expan-
sion rate is about 0.2–0.5 cm/year, an order of
magnitude lower than normal seafloor spreading
rates. During this tensional phase, the continental
crust is thinned.
III. The post-rift sequence starts at the end of the
rifting phase, when oceanic crust is emplaced.
From this time onward, the subsidence of the
continental margin is thermally controlled and
corresponds to tilting of about 1° around the
initial hinge line. Tectonic movements affecting
the continental margin change completely with
the beginning of the drifting stage and become
moderate to weak.
Brice et al. (1982) and confirmed by Karner et al.
(1997) individualized five different tectonic episodes,
based on the existence of distinct structural–stratigraph-
ic styles.
I. Pre-rift (during the Jurassic), characterized by soft
tectonics.
II. Syn-rift I (Neocomian to lower Barremian), marked
by strong tectonism.
III. Syn-rift 2 (Barremian to Aptian) with a moderate
tectonic.
IV. Post-rift (Albian to Eocene), corresponding to
continental drift phase, associated with weak
tectonism.
V. Regional subsidence (Oligocene to Holocene), es-
sentially characterized by tilting of the basins to the
west.
Recently, Guiraud et al. (2010) reported that the
Angola margin consists of three sub-basins: (1) the
North Kwanza margin segment, which opened into the
West Congolian Pan-African mobile belt; (2) and (3),
respectively, the South Kwanza and Benguela margin
segments, which formed along the narrow arcuate coast-
al Pan-African Belt lying on the western edge of the
Angola Eburnian craton (see basement map in Fig. 3).
The most striking tectonic features of the Pan-African
fold belts are the westward dipping mylonitic shear
zones. They suggest that the Early Cretaceous coastal
rift systems of Angola opened along weak zones in the
Precambrian crust. The North Kwanza orthogonal rift
exhibits a prominent NW–SE syn-rift fault grain, which
is roughly parallel to the basement fabric within the
West Congolian Pan-African Belt (Fig. 3). The 140°–
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1117
150° trending syn-rift faults of the North Kwanza
coastal rift correspond to the Early Cretaceous reacti-
vation along pre-existing Pan-African low-angle
thrust planes of the West Congolian fold belt. In the
South Kwanza oblique rift, the left-stepped 170°–
010° rift faults and associated Porto Amboin
intracontinental transfer faults are governed by the
reactivation of the major Precambrian ENE–WSW
shear zones of the BKwanza Horst^ and second-
order Eburnian Palaeoproterozoic 170°–010° frac-
tures disrupting the Angolan Shield (Fig. 3). The
Kwanza Horst marks a major crustal discontinuity
between the Upper Proterozoic West Congolian fold
belt to the north (North Kwanza margin segment) and
the Eburnian Palaeoproterozoic Angolan Shield to the
south (South Kwanza margin segment). By contrast,
in the Benguela coastal rift, transform rifting and the
associated major 050° Cuio transform fault were gen-
erated at a low angle to the NE-trending boundary
between the narrow Pan-African Belt and the Angola
craton (Fig. 3).
3 Database—seismic bulletin
3.1 Sources of data
The Angolan Seismic Bulletin is based mainly on the
compilation of Moreira (1968), complemented since
2003 by the seismic report prepared jointly by the An-
golan Instituto Nacional de Geofísica e Meteorologia
(INAMET) and Agostinho Neto University (UAN). Be-
tween 1975 and 2002, there is no seismic information
available for Angola due to the civil war that happened
during this period.
Other data contributions to the Angolan Seismic
Bulletin were provided by the ISC catalog, for the
period from 1914 to 2014, and the USGS catalog, for
the period from 1976 to 2014.
The magnitude of historical earthquakes, in this arti-
cle, was estimated from the maximum epicentral inten-
sity used in the Brazilian seismic bulletin, published by
the Boletim Seismic (2018).
mb ¼ 1:21 þ 0:45  I 0 ð1Þ
where I0 is the epicentral intensity.
1118 J Seismol (2018) 22:1113–1126

Fig. 3 Structural map of the

Kwanza and Benguela rift basins
and of the basement surrounding
the coastal basins. (Obtained from
Guiraud et al. (2010))

3.2 Seismicity meteorological services defined the main seismic zones

(Moreira 1968). Moreira (1968) reported that about 129
The Angolan studies about seismic activity occurrences earthquakes, most of relatively low intensity, were felt in
began in the late 1940s. The experts from the Angola from 1945 to 1965. However, earthquakes with

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J Seismol (2018) 22:1113–1126
intensity VI–VII in the Mercalli–Cancani–Sieberg scale
(Sieber 1932) were observed, as well. After this date, as
the war for Angolan independence intensified, the ex-
perts probably left the country, and this type of work
stopped. This scenario became worse during the civil
war that ensued after independence in 1975, and only
ended in 2002 when a peace treaty was signed.
In 2003, the INAMET and UAN restarted monitoring
and reporting seismic activity. Based on the approxi-
mate locations where the historical and instrumental
events were felt in known cities, the geographical loca-
tions of these cities were considered representative of
the approximate epicenter of the events. A uniform
magnitude scale, the body magnitude (mb), was applied
throughout the catalog according to the empirical Eq.
(1). The data provided by the USGS and the ISC bulletin
from 1914 to 2014 and the Hidroprojekt of 2007 from
the Capanda Dam seismic network were compiled to
produce the catalog. However, the Hidroprojekt data
were discarded since it contained only date, time, and
coordinates of the likely epicenters. The ISC Bulletin
data reported 116 events with magnitude between 2.6
and 6.0 from 1914 to March, 2014. The USGS Bulletin
data reported 12 events with magnitudes between 3.9
and 5.3 mb in the period from 1976 to 2013. It is
noteworthy that all events of the USGS Bulletin are also
listed in the ISC Bulletin.
We considered the instrumental data since 1962 due
to the increased WWSS network. The Angolan seismic-
ity map (Fig. 4) was produced by combining all the
catalogs to produce one with historical events of mag-
nitude Mb ≥ 3.0 and instrumental data for events of
magnitude Mb ≥ 3.4. Locations of events of these mag-
nitudes should be representative of Angolan seismic
zones.
3.3 Temporal distribution of the Angola seismicity
Figure 5 shows the temporal distribution of the Angolan
earthquakes. In general, intraplate seismicity is tempo-
rally stationary except in some periods, when the rate of
occurrence of the events increases (p.e. in 1949 shows
high seismicity). A similar conclusion was reported by
Talwani (1989), who studied the temporal distribution
of seismicity inside the intraplate setting in southeastern
USA. However, large temporal changes of small to
moderate magnitude seismicity are often observed in
areas with intraplate seismicity (Sykes 1978). The low
data on the histogram is a result of small number of
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1119
seismograph stations and the absence of seismic moni-
toring during the civil war.
3.3.1 Frequency–magnitude relationship for Angola
earthquakes
The frequency–magnitude distribution of the earth-
quake is well expressed (Fig. 6) by the Gutenberg–
Richter relation (Richter 1958)
Log N ¼ a−b M ð2Þ
where N is the number of earthquakes of magnitude
M and higher and a and b are constants for a certain
region. The constant b, known as b value, is the slope of
the log-linear relationship. Agrawal (1991) stated that
tectonic earthquakes are characterized by b values rang-
ing from 0.5 to 1.5, but b falls in a narrow range 0.6 to
1.0 for structure of the earth’s crust (Mogi 1967). Ac-
cording to Mogi (1963) and Scholz (1968), the b value
depends on the percentage of existing stress to the final
breaking stress inside the faults.
Fitting Eq. (2) to the Angolan earthquakes by using
the graphical approach (Fig. 6) yields an estimated
regional b value of 0.66 ± 0.06 and a completeness
magnitude of 3.0 for 177 events. The b value in magni-
tude relationship was low, which is characteristic of
SCRs (Talwani et al. 2014). Also, we estimate how
many years it would take to accumulate enough stress
according to Eq. (2), until a mainshock of magnitude
Mmax is expected to occur by
ΔT
T L ðM max Þ ¼ a−bM max
ð3Þ
10
where ΔT is the time span of the catalog (Zuñiga and
Wyss 2001). The b and TL(M) parameters are mapped
by the gridding technique (Wiemer 1996) and estimated
using the program ZMAP (Wiemer 2001).
The analysis of the recurrence time plot (Fig. 7)
shows that a 4.5 magnitude earthquake has a return
period of 10 years, which becomes ≥ 20 years for M ≥ 5.
4 Seismogenic zones
Llana-Fúnez and López-Fernández, 2015define the
seismogenic zone of the continental crust in an intraplate
scenario as the part of the crust where (far-field) tectonic
1120 J Seismol (2018) 22:1113–1126

Fig. 4 Angola seismicity map

with seismic zones

stress is released by the movement at seismic rates along

Fig. 5 Temporal distribution of Angolan earthquakes
existing discontinuities within the crust, controlled by
frictional deformation processes. In this paper, the
seismogenic zone is defined by evaluating the earth-
quake density (average number or earthquakes by
square kilometer) using the ZMAP software (Wiemer
2001) for the entire earthquake catalog (Fontiela et al.
2014). The main active zones can be defined as follows
(Fig. 4b): (1) Angola craton, where the largest known
event to have occurred in the region is a magnitude 6.0
earthquake, in 1914; (2) Cassai craton, the largest ob-
served event is a magnitude 4.5, in 1999; (3) Bangweulo
craton, the largest observed event is a magnitude 4.8, in
2013; (4) intracratonic sedimentary basin, and the larg-
est observed event is a magnitude 5.9, in 1960; and (5)

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J Seismol (2018) 22:1113–1126
Fig. 6 Frequency–magnitude relationship for Angola, where the
cumulative frequency N(> m) of earthquakes with magnitude larg-
er than m is proportional to the magnitude: log10 N(> m) = a − bm,
where a and b are positive constant
passive margin and Angola offshore, the largest
observed event is a magnitude 5.3, in 2001.
Remarkably, Moreira (1968) based on macroseismic
data had already delimited the main seismic zones in
Angola that coincide with the seismic zones defined in
this work (excluding the passive margin).
Fig. 7 Recurrence time–magnitude relationship for Angolan
earthquakes
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1121
In general, in intraplate regions, the earthquake oc-
currences are associated with preexisting weakness
zones (Sbar and Sykes 1973; Sykes 1978; Johnston
1989; Gangopadhyay and Talwani, 2003; Schulte and
Mooney 2005) and stress concentration due to magmat-
ic intrusions (Campbell 1978).
4.1 Craton seismicity zones
Analyzed in this section are the three craton zones
together: Angola (1), Cassai (3), and Bangweulo (4),
assuming all have similar structure. In these regions, the
analysis shows that the broad majority of both
macroseismic and instrumental earthquake epicenters
are located within or at the edge of grabens that cut
across the cratons (Fig. Fig. 4). It should be emphasized
that these grabens constitute areas of tectonic-magmatic
Meso-Cenozoic reactivation zones, with a great variety
of intrusive rocks with alkaline-ultrabasic, basic and
alkaline composition, kimberlite, and carbonatite.
Crockett and Mason (1968) observed that seismic activ-
ity in South Africa is concentrated in a distinct area that
closely approximates the distribution of lava of the
Karroo system as well as the younger kimberlite pipes.
The broad zone of kimberlite occurrence in South Africa
is a region of relatively high seismic activity, which
includes several moderately sized shocks of magnitude
not greater than 6.
According to Dawson (1970), most kimberlites in
South Africa are of Cretaceous age and believed to have
been intruded during a period of strong uplift of the
continent with attendant downwarping or faulting
around the periphery as a result of the deepening of
the contiguous ocean basins and concludes that kimber-
lites were intruded for the most part into major funda-
mental fractures that cut both the cratonic areas and the
Circum-Cratonic belts during periods of epeirogenic
uplift. So we can suggest as one of the hypotheses for
seismicity in this region.
4.2 Intracratonic basin seismicity zone
This region is within the transcontinental Okavango
Depression: Zambeze (ZBE), Cuando (CDO), and Cu-
bango (CGO) sub-basins (Fig. 1).
Earthquakes that occur in this area (Fig. 4) can be
associated with the hydroseismicity model (Constain
et al. 1987). According to this model, the seismicity in
the region is due to the weakening of rocks due to
1122
mechanical and chemical factors that require the pres-
ence of seismogenic crustal volume and a large amount
of water from rivers and basins to achieve sub-crustal
depths, assuming a permeable crust under tectonic
stress, close to rupture (Talwani 1989; Talwani and
Rajendran 1991). Recently, Crosby et al. (2010) showed
that seismicity suggested mild surface shortening in the
Congo Basin.
4.3 Passive margin seismicity zone
This section correlates the seismic activity between the
Brazilian and Angolan passive margins (sedimentary
basins). We define passive margin as the area between
the coastline and the 2000-m bathymetric contour (used
as a proxy for the oceanic-continental crustal limit), the
same criteria used by Assumpção et al. (2014). The
continental region and the passive margin have a total
of 56 events of magnitude 3.4 or greater in the catalog
(47 on the continent and 9 on the passive margin).
The rifting of the continental margin of Angola syn-
chronously led to a thicker layer. Flexural coupling
caused by the subsiding oceanic Angola Basin and the
Fig. 8 Capanda earthquake epicenter. Mapped faults were taken from Angola Geologic Map Scale 1:1,000,000. Lineaments were taken
from Landsat-8 satellite image
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J Seismol (2018) 22:1113–1126
subsiding continental margin occurred in post-Aptian
and created a westward flexural tilting of the Angola
margin generating a westward thickening wedge of
Cretaceous and Cenozoic sediments. The Angola Basin
is systematically shallower than the global average so
that oceanic crust of 100 m.y. with a depth of about
0.5 km is shallower than normal. This appears to be
typical of the tectonic behavior of the African Plate
which, even today, has a higher regional average eleva-
tion than other continents. Nowadays, intraplate earth-
quakes cluster primarily inside the African continental
crust for reasons related to the lower vertically integrat-
ed strength of the lithosphere when compared to the
oceanic lithosphere (Schlumberger 1991). Concentra-
tion of seismicity in the continental margin is a common
pattern of global seismicity, as shown by Schulte and
Mooney (2005), but local conditions can cause signifi-
cant variations along the margin, as shown by Sandiford
and Egholm (2008), for Australia.
Thus, the seismic activity in the Angolan passive
margin can be associated to flexural stress, as shown by
Assumpção et al. (2011). The analysis of the São Vicente
earthquake in April, 2008 (Brazil passive margin)
J Seismol (2018) 22:1113–1126
combines the preexisting zones of weakness (e.g., Porto
Amboin Transform Fault which is an extension of the
Rio de Janeiro Fault Zone: Guiraud et al. 2010) (Fig. 3).
5 Recent earthquakes
Since January 2013, Gabinete de Aproveitamento do
Médio Kwanza (GAMEK) has been operating the
Capanda Seismograph Network (SNC) made up of four
stations. The seismograph stations consist of trillium
broadband sensors with flat response from 0.2 to
30 Hz, acquiring data continuously at a sampling rate
of 100 Hz using Taurus data loggers.
Recently, three earthquakes were recorded in the
Capanda Dam network, on July 23 and November 19,
in 2013, with magnitude 2.2 and 3.9, respectively
(Figs. 8 and 9). The third event occurred on November
10, 2014. The events occurred within the seismic zone
defined in this work as the BAngola craton seismic
zone.^
The July 23, 2013, earthquake was a local event
located about 14 km from the closest station. It occurred
in the Capanda region near to the Capanda Dam
Fig. 9 Cassongue and Balombo earthquake epicenter. Mapped faults were taken from the Angolan Geological Map, scale 1:1,000,000
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1123
reservoir. The November 19, 2013 and November
10, 2014 earthquakes were regional events about
231 and 301 km from the closest SNC stations, in
the Cassongue, Kwanza Sul Province and Balombo,
Benguela Province (Fig. 9). In the following sections
are descriptions of a comparison of these three earth-
quakes. The discussions are centered on the location
of the events, their focal depths, and association with
preexisting structures as well as their relation to the
geologic and tectonic environments. According to
Rajendran and Rajendran (1999), most SCR earth-
quakes are characterized by shallow depths (≤ 15 km)
though Johnston (1996) reported a few deeper events
(> 25 km).
(a) Characteristics of the Capanda earthquake
The Capanda earthquake occurred close to the An-
gola craton edge, about 17 km away from the Capanda
reservoir (Fig. 8). Tectonically, the area forms part of the
Kwanza Horst, which is a linear latitudinal basement
elevation, about 300 km long and 25–50 km wide,
bordered on the north and south by deep faults. This
structure is covered by a thin cover of sedimentary
deposits in several cycles of the Upper Proterozoic.
The lifting of the basement block reached its maximum
1124 J Seismol (2018) 22:1113–1126

Table 1 Source parameters for the July 23, 2013 earthquake

Time of origin hh:mm:ss.ss Latitude (°) Longitude (°) ERH (km) Depth (km) Magnitude/no. of stations RMS (s)

06:36:51.64 − 9.701 15.411 1.9 2.3 2.2 MC/4 0.03

amplitude in the final stage (orogenic) of the Upper
Proterozoic cycle (ENAGM 1988).
A Landsat-8 image shows lineaments with a prefer-
ential NW–SE trend (Fig. 8) that should probably be the
maximum horizontal stress (SHmax) orientation. For this
area, we can be associated with a preexisting weakness
zone and stress concentration Gangopadhyay and
Talwani, 2003). Also, there is a possibility that the
Capanda reservoir triggered this earthquake, and thus,
the hydroseismicity model (Talwani 1989; Talwani and
Rajendran 1991) cannot be disregarded. The source
parameters of the event are summarized in Table 1.
The determination of source parameters was done using
the SEISAN software package (Havskov and
Ottemöller 2005), which was used to analyze wave-
forms and compute earthquake locations with HYPO-
CENTER (Lienert 1994). The computations were done
using the IASPEI91 velocity model. Magnitudes were
calculated according to Eq. (4) following Lee et al.
(1972).
The Cassongue earthquake occurred in the middle of
the Angola Craton, inside the Lucapa Graben (Fig. 9),
which is considered a tectonic-magmatic reactivation
zone of Mesozoic age, with alkaline, kimberlite, and
basaltic intrusion. According to Crockett and Mason
(1968), the distribution of known diamond and nickel
deposits is closely related to the zones of crustal weak-
ness, and particularly to areas where two or more zones
intersect.
These earthquakes were recorded by international
networks and were reported in the ISC and USGS
bulletins. To minimize the azimuthal gap, we also re-
trieved data from IRIS stations TSUM (Namibia), LSZ
(Zambia), and LBTB (Botswana). The epicenters of the
Balombo and Cassongue events are shown in Fig. 9, and
the source parameters summarized in Tables 2 and 3.
The tables show that for the Cassongue earthquake, our
estimate is further east from ISC and USGS estimate
using stations closer; also for the Balombo event, esti-
mates are very close.

Mc ¼ 2logðTcodaÞ þ 0:0035  R−0:87 ð4Þ

6 Conclusion
where R is the epicenter distance and Tcoda is the
coda length in seconds. The real seismicity rate of Angola is difficult to deter-
(b) Characteristics of the Cassongue and Balombo mine due to the absence of a local network able to
earthquakes perform reasonable instrumental monitoring throughout

Table 2 Source parameters of the November 19, 2013 earthquake

Time of origin hh:mm:ss.ss Latitude (°) Longitude (°) ERH (km) Depth (km) Magnitude/no. of stations RMS (s) Ref.

00:15:19.56 − 11.8616 14.363 0.0 4.1mb/14 1.1 ISC

00:15:21 − 11.794 14.691 15.1 4.2 USGS
00:15:19.21 − 11.787 14.846 37.7 0.0 3.9 MC/7 0.21 This work

Table 3 Source parameters of the November 10, 2014 earthquake

Time of origin hh:mm:ss.ss Latitude (°) Longitude (°) ERH (km) Depth (km) Magnitude/no. of stations RMS (s) Ref.

01:28:55.39 − 12.452 14.755 14.9 15.0 4.1 mb/19 0.89 USGS

01:28:54.57 − 12.442 14.734 48.6 10.5 4.1 Mc/6 0.18 This work

Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.

J Seismol (2018) 22:1113–1126
the country, and, in particular, in regions with the
greatest seismic activity. There is also poor knowledge
of historical seismicity. Some characteristics of the seis-
micity of Angola are as follows: The magnitude 6.0
earthquake has a return period of about 100 years. An-
other parameter estimated is a regional b value of 0.66,
which is within the range considered for stable conti-
nental regions (Johnston et al. 1994). Gupta et al. (1972)
reported a regional b value for East Africa of 0.84.
Agrawal (1991) states that tectonic earthquakes are
characterized by b values between 0.5 and 1.5, though
it is more frequently around 1.0 for seismically active
regions. According to Stein and Wysession (2003), a
high b value (~ 2) is typical for earthquake swarms while
a low b value indicates extreme stress conditions. For
the inhabited areas, such as Southwestern Angola, the
completeness magnitude is estimated to be 4.5 before
1900, as events of this magnitude and above are very
likely to have been at 100-km distance or more. In other
areas, such as Southeastern Angola, the threshold of 3.4
was only attained in the late 1960s with the installation
of WWSSN stations in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and Bro-
ken Hill, Zambia. It is expected that the installation of
the Capanda reservoir network station, in 2013, will
assist to understand the seismicity of the area and coun-
try better.
Acknowledgements We thank anonymous referee for careful
revision and positive criticism, which greatly improved our work.
We also thank INAMET and GAMEL. GSF thanks CNPq for PQ
grant 307255/2013-1. We would like to thank the reviewers and
Chris Fianco to their insightful comments. Gabriel Brito de França
for helping us translate this paper.
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