Today’s Friday links are mostly about cake geology and scientists playing with food, but let’s start with something different. Yesterday, volcano Fuego (“fire”) erupted in Guatemala and produced an impressive column of ash and smoke. This beautiful stratovolcano is only 40 km from Guatemala City and one of the most active volcanos of Central America. more
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What’s up? The Friday links (44)
2012-09-14 | in The Friday Links -
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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New paper on archeoseismological investigations in Cologne, Germany
2012-09-11 | in Paper | 2 responsesA new paper has been published online first by Hinzen et al. on their archeoseismological study in Cologne, Germany. During recent archeological excavations, a number of damaged structures from Roman to Medieval times have been discovered and described among them a synagoge, the Praetorium, and a Roman well. Since damaging historical earthquakes are documented for the Lower Rhine Embayment, seismic shaking was a good guess to have caused the observed damage. 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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What’s up? The Friday links (43)
2012-08-31 | in The Friday LinksTwo really strong earthquakes happened yesterday at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in the Jan Mayen Islands area. The first one had a magnitude of M6.6, the second one, around ten minutes later, had M5.3. Moment tensor solutions show clear strike slip along a transform fault west of the ridge. The seismicity map shows that events like yesterday’s don’t come as a suprise: more
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What’s up? The Friday links (42)
2012-08-24 | in The Friday LinksOne of the coolest things I recently read about was the Syracuse University Lava Project. I mean, how cool is it to produce your own lava at 1200°C and to let it flow on Campus? Pretty cool. And, as you can see on these images, it is a great way to teach children how cool geoscience is. Watch the beautiful structures developing when the lava cools down: 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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New papers: L’Aquila, Balochistan EQ, tectonic geomorphology, geophysics in Mongolia
2012-08-13 | in PaperAfter I came back from one week of holidays I checked the latest papers. Surprisingly, one was by myself! Finally IOP published our work on combined geoscience techniques in the Orkhon Valley, Central Mongolia. We used Georadar, SQUID-gradiometers, capacitive-coupled geoelectrics, octocopter stereoimages, shallow drillings, datings, and archaeological excavations for an geoarchaeological project. Using geophysical, archaeological and geological observations, we assumed a dating in the Turk/Uighur period (6th–9th century AD) and a re-use under Mongolian reign (12th–17th century AD). This would mean that this site is the furthermost walled structure in the peri-urban area of Khar Balgas. more
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New papers – Minoan earthquakes, catastrophism, archaeoseismology in Israel, Costa Concordia
2012-08-01 | in PaperCurrently I spend my time working on some papers that deal with tsunamis in the Eastern Mediterranean and earthquakes in Spain. Searching for literature and looking for data on the Minoan catastrophe I came across this new open access publication by Simon Jusseret and Manuel Sintubin:
- All That Rubble Leads to Trouble: Reassessing the Seismological Value of Archaeological Destruction Layers in Minoan Crete and Beyond. Seismological Research Letters, 83, 4, 736-742, doi:10.1785/0220120011.
Our colleagues from IGCP567 – Earthquake Archaeology put a lot of effort into getting rid of catastrophism and into making archeoseismology a more reliable, quantitative science. By the way, don’t miss the next workshop on archeoseismology and active tectonics in Mexico 2012! 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