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In my DFG-financed project “Earth surface response to Quaternary faulting and shallow crustal structure in the eastern Adria-Alpine collision zone and the Friulian plain” I investigate the active faults of NE Italy and western Slovenia. This project is part of the Priority Programme SPP2017 “Mountain Building Processes in 4D“. We’ve now published a paper on the activity of the Udine-Buttrio thrust fault. The paper is open access and available here.

[UPDATE 2017-05-14: The links now lead to the free version of the paper, available until 30 June.]

Together with my colleagues I have published a new paper in which we describe a methodology for mapping the shallow architecture of large sedimentary basins with minimum effort and high resolution. We use two geophysical methods and combine them with point information from shallow drillings to identify different types of alluvial, fluvial, and aeolian sediments in the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia. We then show that our results fit well with a remote sensing approach. Although we did not target active faults in our study, the methodology is well suitable for detecting deformed/offset sediments without surface expression due to high erosion or sedimentation rates. That’s why I feel the study is of interest for the fault-hunting community. more

I am quite happy that our new paper has finally been published in GJI. We worked on a fault between Aachen and Cologne in Germany and found that there has been a surface rupturing earthquake less than 9000 years ago, and possibly not much older than 2500 years BP. The area is of interest also because in 1755/56 a series of damaging earthquakes hit Düren and its surroundings – these are the strongest historical events in Germany that we know of. The quakes were felt as far away as Berlin, Strasbourg, and London, yet there were no primary ruptures. “Our” quake must have been much stronger… more

The Canyonlands National Park, Utah, is famous for its beautiful landscape and spectacular landforms. For many geoscientists it is also well-known as a sandstone reservoir analogue and as a tourist you’ll often run into groups of geologists on field trips. It’s a matter of debate how and how fast the beautiful grabens in the Needles Fault zone formed – these are large arcuate canyons several tens of kilometres in length, paralleling the Colorado River. In a new paper we present results from remote sensing, mapping, and georadar (GPR). Our aim was to better understand the coupling between deformation, erosion and deposition in such an active system. Based on our findings we developed a model of graben formation and describe the geometry of the dilatant faults at depth. We argue that either the grabens are older than previously assumed or that sedimentation rates were much higher in the Pleistocene.

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Our latest paper on coastal change in Oman deals with an extreme flood event that was recorded in an archaeological site in Ras al Hadd, at the easternmost tip of the Arabian Peninsula. We found multiple evidence for tsunamis that hit Oman’s coast in the past. Close to Fins, mega-boulders were thrown on a cliff by huge waves. Fine-grained sediments typical for tsunami action were found in the same area. Searching for further evidence, we came across the archaeological site of HD6 in Ras al Hadd. The archaeologists who were excavating this site told us about strange findings in the archaeological record – they encountered a layer that interrupted the otherwise continuous stratigraphy of the settlement. The bronze age fishing village is located very close to the coast only a few meters above sea level, a large tsunami could easily impact here. more

During the month of March 2014, Sascha and I along with Tobi and Lauretta (BSc students from RWTH University) were in Greece for fieldwork. The fieldwork campaign started on the island of Crete; our institute at RWTH Aachen has a joint project with Mainz University to carry out paleotsunami investigations on the island. The western part of Crete was uplifted by approximately 9 m during the 21st July AD 365 earthquake and also hit by the associated tsunami. Due to the strong seismic and highly tsunamigenic activity of the nearby Hellenic Trench, it is suggested that numerous earlier tsunamis have also struck the island. more

My latest paper deals with the Holocene activity of the Ventas de Zafarraya Fault in Southern Spain. It was published some days ago in the most recent issue of Cuaternario y Geomorfología. The Ventas de Zafarraya Fault (VZF) west of the Granada basin (36.96° N, 4.14°W) has a beautiful morphologic expression and an exciting history. The fault bounds the Zafarraya polje to the south, with Quaternary sediments to the north (hanging wall) and limestones of the Internal Subbetics in the footwall (Fig. 1). more

I am currently at GUtech in Oman, a sister university of RWTH Aachen University, for teaching Geophysics and I spend most of the free time in the field with my colleague Gösta Hoffmann. On Friday we went to the Batinah area NW of Mascat to look for active faults. The Batinah is a plain of most likely Quaternary age, made up from the sediments delivered from the huge mountains in the south. Folded Tertiary limestones are cropping out close to the mountain range. Some of them are covered by Quaternary gravels, others aren’t. more