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On Monday, 31 March, our colleague and friend George Papathanassiou from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki will give an invited talk about Seismic Environmental Effects triggered by the January and February 2014 Cephalonia Earthquakes. The presentation will start 2:00 pm at RWTH Aachen University, Lochnerstr. 4-20, 52064 Aachen, room 217. Please download the flyer here, guests are welcome.

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A team of geologists mapped the earthquake environmental effects (EEEs) of the two M6+ events that occurred at the Greek Island of Cephalonia on 26 January and 3 February, 2014. G. Papathanassiou, A. Ganas, S. Valkaniotis, M. Papanikolaou and S. Pavlides participated in these field campaigns. George Papathanassiou sent me the preliminary report today. The team found widespread evidence for “liquefaction, road-fill failures, rock falls, small landslides and stonewall failures“. more

A colleague sent us this image which he took in the Athens subway few days ago. He didn’t know the person who was carrying the luggage, but he recognized the sticker on the suitcase.

I also do not know who you are, but I like your suitcase! more

On 26 January and 3 February, two strong and shallow earthquakes of magnitude 6+ occured at the island of Kefalonia/Cephalonia in Western Greece. The events caused intense damage to buildings and infrastructure. A team of EERI (Earthquake Engineering Research Institute) scientists went to the island to map these kind of damages. Earthquake Environmental Effects (EEE) like rockfalls, landslides, and lateral spreading were also caused by the events. George Papathanassiou and his colleagues mapped these features and sent me the following photos from Lixouri. more

Two earthquakes of magnitude M6+ occured near the island of Kefalonia in Western Greece on 26 January and 3 February, 2014. Both were shallow strike slip events that are associated with the Kefalonia transform fault and caused not only damages to buildings and infrastructure, but also significant earthquake environmental effects (EEEs). Here I compile some photo and video sources from rockfalls and other features. more

Annals of Geomorphology has now published a new volume on Paleotsunamis in its Supplementary Issues. Issue 57 (4) is all about Reconstructing and modeling palaeotsunami events by multi-proxy geoscientific analyses. The volume is an outcome of the 2011 Corinth conference and edited by Andreas Vött, Klaus Reicherter and Ioannis Papanikolaou. I especially like it not only because I’ve organized the conference, but also because I am familiar with some of the study sites. Finally, I am co-author of the last paper. more

During December, Greece has suffered from heavy rains and severe flooding. The following video shows a church near the town of Schinos (Skinos), which has been seriously affected by flooding and sedimentation. Many geology students and many paleoseismologists will find the church looking familiar, and I will explain why: more

A new paper in Tectonophysics deals with the use of terrestrial LiDAR for identifying the slip vectors on fault planes. Thomas Wiatr, Klaus Reicherter, Ioannis Papanikolaou, Tomás Fernandez-Steeger and Jack Mason collected and processed data from Crete island (Greece), where they scanned the scarp of the Spili Fault. They imaged numerous kinematic (slip direction) indicators like slickensides with this relatively new technique. The t-LiDAR data were then compared to traditional compass measurements in order to get an idea about the derivation betwen old-school measurements and high-tech methods.  more

Today we went for field work again – mapping active faults in Northern Attica, trying to find out about offsets and slip rates, and scouting sites for applying Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) later. We found some very beautiful fault scarps and measured a good number of strike and dip values. At two locations we also recorded topographic profiles across the scarps in order to get an idea about the vertical offset. Combined with the assumption that these scarps are post-glacial, we can estimate slip rates. more

The RealClimate blog network published two long articles on the state of the art of sea level rise estimations. Part 1 was written by Stefan Rahmstorf on 9 Jan, part 2 was posted today. What will we need to prepare for until the end of the century?  more