New paper on the paleoseismicity of the Dead Sea – Kagan et al., 2011

Some days ago a new paper on the paleoseismicity of the Dead Sea area during the late Holocene has been published in JGR. Kagan et al, 2011 investigated two new study sites in the northern and southern parts of the Dead Sea Basin and compared the seismites found there with the information of the Ein Gedi core presented by Migowski et al., 2004.

The authors found between 15 and 52 seismite layers and created an age-depth chronological model mainly based on 14C datings with a very low uncertainty of the model ages. They were able to determine at least eight seismites that exist in every study site, pointing to large seismic events that affected the entire basin with recurrence rates around 200 yrs. From 2nd to 4th Century AD, the whole study area underwent a seismic quiescence period.

Download the paper here (may be restricted).

Kagan, E., Stein, M., Agnon, A., Neumann, F. 2011: Intrabasin paleoearthquake and quiescence correlation of the late Holocene Dead Sea. Journal of Geophysical Research, 116, B04311, doi:10.1029/2010JB007452.

Migowski, C., Agnon, A., Bookman, R., Negendank, J. F. W., Stein, M. 2004: Recurrence pattern of Holocene earthquakes along the Dead Sea Transform revealed by varve‐counting and radiocarbon dating of lacustrine sediments. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 222, 301, doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2004.02.015.

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Christoph Grützner

Christoph Grützner

works at the Institute of Geological Sciences, Jena University. He likes Central Asia and the Mediterranean and looks for ancient earthquakes.

See all posts Christoph Grützner

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