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Dear Colleagues and Friends,

we are pleased to announce that the 6^th  INQUA International Workshop on Active Tectonics, Paleoseismology and Archeoseismology will be held in Pescina (Abruzzo, Central Italy) in the period 19 – 24 April 2015.

We invite all scientists in the fields of earthquake geology, paleoseismology, archeoseismology, tsunami studies, earthquake engineering, seismic hazard assessment to join this event.

We will celebrate the centenary of the 1915 M7 Fucino earthquake, that has been one of the most devastating earthquakes occurred in the Apennines. The earthquake produced extensive surface faulting and left a strong imprint in the landscape giving rise to an incredibly rich seismological, geological and paleoseismological amount of studies in the last century.

Scientific sessions will be attended in the unique historical and cultural atmosphere of the Pescina village, followed by 2 days-field trip in the Fucino and L’Aquila area, retracing on the field the path of faults, landscapes, castles and ancient settlements. Moreover, a pre-congress archaeoseismic tour in Rome will be offered to all the participants.

Soon a specific website dedicated to this event will be available, where you will find more detailed and updated information, including information on the Participation, Travel Grants and Scientific Programme.

The Fucino 2015 Organizing Committee more

Two articles dealing with induced (or triggered?) seismicity caught my attention last week. Time came up with a report about “The Seismic Link Between Fracking and Earthquakes“. New studies on that topic had been presented at the SSA annual meeting in Alaska. Basically it’s now possible to link two phenomena: a) The huge increase in shale gas and oil development in Ohio, Oklahoma, and Kansas during the last few years; and b) the huge increase in earthquake activity in Ohio, Oklahoma, and Kansas during the last few years. more

I came across several interesting papers on paleoseismology and related disciplines, most of them published recently. They deal with “classical” paleoseismology, with earthquake environmental effects like coseismic landslides and tsunamis, and also with geomorphological indicators for active faulting. Let me know if I missed some! more

A new paper by Esposito et al. has been published in Springer’s Landslide Science and Practice that will help to better constrain intensities on the ESI scale. Landslides induced by twelve moderate to strong earthquakes events during the last 300 yrs have been analyzed. The authors calculated distance vs. magnitude and distance vs. ESI epicentral intensity relationships, similar to the famous correlations by Keefer (1984). more

The latest issue of the Seismological Research Letters (SRL) has at least three papers dealing with topics interesting for paleoseismologists.

Hinzen et al. studied the rotation of objects (e.g., monuments) during the L’Aquila earthquake of 2009. They scanned the rotated objects with a high-res laser scanner, built discrete-element-models from the data and simulated the shaking necessary to cause the deformation. The results help to better estimate earthquake parameters from earthquake archaeological effects (EAEs).

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The latest issue of the Seismological Research Letters (SRL) does not only have a very stylish cover, but also includes some papers that will be of interest for the fans of old earthquakes and environmental earthquake effects (EEEs). In the Historical Seismologist section, Bilham et al describe the hunt for a lost fault – that is, one that was described by Oldham in the 19th Century, but never really located and almost forgotten. Nice! more

It’s been a while since the last Friday links, so today’s list is rather long. Of course the Russian meteoroid-meteor-meteorite (yes, in this order!) was an absolutely amazing, though destructive phenomenon. The air blast was registered equivalent to an earthquake of magnitude 2.7. Read Livescience’s article here and read this text to get to know about meteors and seismograms in general. more

Dear colleagues,

please consider submitting abstracts to the following session to be held at the IAEG XII Congress in Torino, 15-19 September 2014:

• Off-fault coseismic surface effects and their impact in urban areas
• Surface fault-rupture hazard in urban areas

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Something many people have been waiting for happened last week. Judge Marco Billi explained his verdict in the L’Aquila case. In a 950 page document he published the so-called “motivazione”, stating that “the deficient risk analysis was not limited to the omission of a single factor, but to the underestimation of many risk indicators and the correlations between those indicators.” This should have been understood by the scientists, but instead they delivered a “superficial, approximate and generic” analysis. more

Annals of Geophysics’ latest Special Issue 55-5 is focussed on Earthquake Geology: Active tectonics in the Mediterranean and Europe: site studies and application of new methodologies. This issue was edited by L. Cucci, P. M. De Martini, E. Masana, and K. Vanneste and contains seven papers. As always, all articles are open access. more