Annals of Geophysics, the former Annali di Geofisica, published its latest issue today, dedicated to the 2012 Northern Italy earthquakes: Vol 55, No 4 (2012): The Emilia (northern Italy) seismic sequence of May-June, 2012: preliminary data and results. On 20 May 2012 an earthquake with a magnitude of Mw6.1 hit Finale Emilia, on 29 May an Mw5.8 event followed. The earthquakes caused a number of fatalities and significant damage. Earthquake environmental effects were widely observed, too. more
Posts in the category » Earthquake « ( 123 Posts )
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Special Issue on the 2012 Emilia (Italy) earthquakes in Annals of Geophysics
2012-10-17 | in Earthquake, Paper -
New papers on the Sparta Fault, Greece and the Wasatch Fault, Utah
2012-09-13 | in Earthquake, PaperThe Sparta Fault in Greece is marked by one of the most impressive mountain fronts I’ve ever seen. A huge (yes, huge!) fault scarp has developed, traceable for kilometers; the fault itself is more than 60 km long. Ancient Sparta has been devastated by the last known major (M>7) earthquake that happened at this fault in 464 BC. Now, Papanikolaou et al. have published new data on this fault. They examined how paramaters like throw, segmentation, and catchments vary along strike and created a new seismic hazard map, showing a site-specific long-term recurrence interval of ~1.8 ka (+/- 450 a). more
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Earthquake series in southern China
2012-09-10 | in EarthquakeThis Friday a series of four major earthquakes happened in the border region of Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces, S China. At least 80 fatalities and almost 800 injured were recorded, the China Earthquake Administration states. International journals confirm these news. Associated landslides were reported. more
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An earthquake catalogue for the last millenium
2012-08-21 | in EarthquakeA new earthquake catalogue has been published by the GFZ Potsdam (German Research Centre for Geosciences). The Database covers the European-Mediterranean area and reaches back to AD1000. This is good news and an important step on our long way to collect all earthquake information available in one place. I say it’s a first step only, because we know much more than the catalogue incorporates: Besides ~100 years of instrumental records we have historical data covering hundreds of years in many regions, but reaching back to some thousands of years in regions like Greece and Israel. Then, there’s archaeoseismological data of course and paleoseismology, which can resolve events that happened thousands of years ago. more
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A M7.7 earthquake in the Sea of Okhotsk and two M6.2 events in Iran
2012-08-14 | in EarthquakeThis morning at 03:00 UTC an earthquake with magnitude MW7.7 occurred in the Sea of Okhotsk. Due to its great depth of more than 600 km no tsunami was triggered and surface shaking was pretty low, however, the event was felt in a wide area. Moment tensor solutions indicate a thrust event. Historical seismicity tells us that significant earthquakes are likely to happen in the region and mostly occur in great depths, but at this certain location only few events have been registered during the last decades. more
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What’s up? The Friday links (40)
2012-07-27 | in Earthquake, The Friday Links | 2 responsesOn 11 April 2012, a Mw8.6 strike-slip earthquake occurred off Sumatra in a kind of intra-plate setting and came as a surprise to the earthquake community. Such a strong strike-slip event was not expected, we always thought that the huge thrust quakes at subduction zones were the only ones to release that much energy. Now a press release by CalTech reports on the latest studies that came to the result that many previously unknown perpendicular faults ruptured at this event. Immediately some journalists suggested that this might also happen at the San Andreas Fault. I do not know of any paleoseismological evidence that this has happened there before. However, how likely is this scenario?
Link to the paper: An earthquake in a maze: compressional rupture branching during the April 11 2012 M8.6 Sumatra earthquake. more
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Paleoseismological trench at the Finale Emilia earthquake site
2012-07-10 | in Earthquake, TeachingA paleoseismological trench has been opened at San Carlo – Sant’Agostino. At this place, liquefaction features and other environmental earthquake effects were recognized after the Finale Emilia earthquake of 2 May 2012, magnitude MW6.1. The trench reveals normal fault features close to the surface. Our colleague Alex Chatzipetros from Earthquake Geology of Greece posted a great article on the trench work and has all the interesting photos. more
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Data sources for the Finale Emilia earthquake (Mw6.1)
2012-06-04 | in EarthquakeMore than two weeks have gone now after the Mw6.1 earthquake in Northern Italy, and a very strong aftershock has rattled the area again and caused casualties and more buildings to collapse. Several reports are already published on that event and we have lots of data which is waiting to be analyzed. Here’s a summary of data sources: more
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Finale Emilia earthquake: preliminary report on Earthquake Environmental Effects (EEEs)
2012-05-31 | in EarthquakeThe University Insubria (Como, Italy) has published the first report on the earthquake environmental effects that accompanied the Northern Italy “Finale Emilia Earthquake” of 20 May, 2012. On that day, a quake with magnitude Mw6.1 rocked the Po Plain, leaving seven people dead and hundreds of houses damaged. On 29 May, a very strong M5.8 aftershock occurred in the region. more
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New data from the Northern Italy Mw6.1 earthquake (20 May 2012)
2012-05-21 | in EarthquakeThe INGV has published some new data on the earthquake that hit Italy in the morning of 20 May, 2012 and caused damages and casualties. Peak ground accelerations (PGA) reached 28%g in the epicentral area. This is not unusual for an event of that size. Peak ground velocities (PGV) were as high as 20 cm/s. The spectral response is more interesting. The 3s period response is 1.5%g only, at 1s period the area encountered 18%g, and for the 0.3s period the values reached 49%g, which is quite a lot for a Mw6.1 quake. However, the longer periods tend to be more dangerous for buildings. more