Second meeting on Active Faults and Paleoseismology in two weeks, so I am on the road again. Today, the 2nd Iberfault meeting in Lorca/Murcia/Spain starts focussing on A multidisciplinary approach to the study of active faults, earthquakes and seismic risk. After the very successful first meeting in Sigüenza/Guadalajara/Spain in 2010 after four years now the city of Lorca is the host. The reason is simple: a magnitude 5.1 earthquake struck the area, leaving the region with the relative high number of 9 casualties, 100 Mio. € damage and a series of scientific papers that e.g. this earthquake was anthropogenically induced by water expulsion (it was discussed here a couple of months ago by Christoph). more
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Jose Lorca
2nd IBERFAULT meeting in Lorca/Spain
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Iain Stewart
A Double Ethical Bind Along the Dead Sea Fault?
2014-10-17 | in Earthquake | 2 responses“Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
I was thinking of this quote whilst listening to Mustapha Meghraoui’s talk during this week’s ISEMG conference in Mugla (Turkey). Mustapha was reviewing the seismic hazard potential of the northern stretch of the Dead Sea Rift, and he ended by identifying two prominent areas where there was a substantial long-term (1000 yr) slip deficit that strongly suggested heightened future earthquake potential. The quote above has nothing to do with earthquakes. Neither is it by Mustapha. Instead, it relates to global warming and was from the climate modeller and policy advocate Stephen Schneider. Nevertheless, it struck me that what Schneider was wrestling with a decade or so ago with climate change has parallels to what some earthquake geologists are wrestling with now: what do we do when we believe that the science demands action? more
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8th International Symposium on Eastern Mediterranean Geology in Mugla/Turkey
2014-10-14 | in Events, Meeting, paleoseismicity.orgIn this week the 8th International Symposium on Eastern Mediterranean Geology started in Mugla/Turkey, our colleague Ersen Aksoy is one of the major organizers together with his colleagues and teams from the Mulga University, many sessions with interesting talks are scheduled, the programme lists many interesting talks on paleoseismology of the Aegean area and Turkey, and the Levant area. Yesterday, the meeting strated with keynotes from Celal Sengör (on the eastern Mediterranean tectonic framework and deformation history) and Iain Stewart (on: Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Communicating Geology to Society). Then the individual scientific sessions started with presentations on….
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Schwede66CC SA 3.0
3He dating of rockfalls helps to distinguish between proximal and distal paleo-earthquakes in Christchurch, NZ
2014-10-13 | in EarthquakeThe 2011 Christchurch earthquake series had severe consequences and surprised scientists for many reasons. Ground motions were extremely strong despite the relative moderate magnitudes of the quakes (MW 5.3-7.1). The events happened on a system of hitherto unknown faults, some of which are located directly below Christchurch. Earthquake environmental effects (EEE), especially liquefaction, were intense and widespread. It turned out that subsequent quakes reactivated the same feeder dikes of sand blows, showing that saturated sediments are susceptible of liquefaction no matter if they had been liquefied recently (also see the paper of Quigley et al. (2013) on the liquefaction effects). Another stunning lesson was the occurrence of intense rockfall in the vicinity of Christchurch. In a recently published study, Mackey and Quigley (2014) dated rockfall boulders with 3He and show that they allow to estimate the recurrence intervall of local seismic events like the 2011 series. This works is a very interesting way to use EEE for paleo-earthquake studies. more
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Christoph GrütznerCC BY-SA 3.0
Latest publications on paleoseismology and related fields
2014-10-06 | in PaperA couple of new papers on paleoseismology and related fields have recently been published. They deal with active tectonics in China, coseismic uplift in Japan, seismites in Canada, turbidite and lake sediment paleoseismology, earthquake environmental effects in Greece, paleotsunami deposits in India, an earthquake and tsunami in 1531 in Lisbon, tsunamites in Malta, tectonic geomorphology, scaling relationships in the Med, and the 2013 Balochistan earthquake and subsequent tsunami. If you miss recent studies here, drop us a mail. more
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Call for papers: Special Issue of the International Journal of Earth Science on Eastern Mediterranean Tectonics
The GeoFrankfurt conference took place a few days ago. Due to the large amount of work presented on Eastern Mediterranean Tectonics, a special issue on this topic will be published in the International Journal of Earth Sciences (former Geologische Rundschau). Paris Xypolias allowed me to circulate the call for papers: more
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Luca Guerrieri
5th PATA Days in Busan – abstract volume and field trip guide available for download
2014-10-01 | in Busan 2014, Meeting, PATA days | 2 responsesThe 5th PATA Days have been a great experience. We had lots of interesting science and discussions, great field trips, wonderful social events and a quite thoroughly insight into Korean cuisine. It was for sure the best organized PATA Days meeting that took place so far – many thanks and congratulations to Prof. Young-Seog Kim, Dr. Jin-Hyuck Choi and the fantastic Korean organizing team.
If you want to download the abstract volume and the field trips guide, here are the free download links: more
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5 th PATA Days in Busan, Korea, news from the meeting, field trips
2014-09-28 | in Busan 2014, Meeting, PATA daysThe second day of the meeting revealed very nice and interesting talks of the Korean geologists and paleoseismologists, which was an excellent preparation for the upcoming post-meeting field trips on the following days. Talker of the day was Dr Tom Rockwell, he gave three talks and lectures, however one as replacement for Bill Lettis, who wasn´t able to come to Korea. Before dinner a traditional Korean drum and percussion show opened our ears and eyes for this beautiful and sometimes mysterious country. This closing dinner outside Busan was very special, in a kind of museum with a terracotta choir of a million voices, and…. more
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5 th PATA Days in Busan, Korea, news from the meeting
2014-09-24 | in Busan 2014, Meeting, PATA daysYesterday and today is the time of the lectures and talks, after the introducing field excursion as Christoph has reported. Yesterday evening we waved goodbye to Christoph with a couple of beers, he already needed to leave for another meeting in Durham, UK, early. We started yesterday morning with keynotes by John Suppe on folding and fold scarps and Vincent Cronin on his SLAM project (the seismo-lineament analysis method, visit his webpage for more information). more
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PATA Days in Busan, Korea, have started
2014-09-23 | in Busan 2014, Meeting, PATA days | 2 responsesThe 5th PATA Days (5th International INQUA Meeting on Paleoseismology, Active Tectonics and Archeoseismology) have started with a great icebreaker party on Sunday. On Monday we went on a field trip to Korea’s east coast and had a look at uplifted Late Quaternary terraces and some relatively young thrust faults. Plus, we visited a nuclear waste deposit site. Today the first presentations will start at 10 a.m. and the first poster session will be held. Here are some impressions from the first days: