Anika Braun

Still looking for a cool conference to attend this summer? Why not travel to Kyrgyzstan for the 17th International Symposium on Geo-disaster Reduction from 19-23 August 2019, organized by our friend Hans-Balder Havenith with Liège University, the Kyrgyz Institute of Seismology and Institute of Geomechanics and Mining, and the International Consortium on Geo-disaster Reduction (ICGdR)? more

Last October I was given the chance to attend the “iRALL school on field data collection, monitoring, and modeling of large landslides” in Chengdu, China. During the school, we spent one week in the epicentral area of the Ms=8.0 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, where I was able to take some interesting pictures of earthquake damage and coseismic landslides. Then other things happened, like the earthquakes in Italy and New Zealand, with exciting sights from the field shared here, and I never ended up sharing my Wenchuan pics, which I want to do now. more

Some weeks ago we published a new study on the classification of earthquake-induced landslide event sizes based on seismotectonic, topographic, climatic and geologic factors. Our idea was that this classification could be used to help improve seismic hazard assessment by contributing to a better prediction of landslide hazards induced by an earthquake when the geologic, topographic and climatic context is well defined. Possible applications could be the short-term prediction right after an earthquake or scenario modeling, e.g. for critical infrastructure. Since earthquake triggered landslide event sizes are also an important proxy for the estimation of magnitude and intensity of past earthquakes, I thought our study might be interesting for the paleoseismicity community as well, and so I put together a brief summary.

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It’s Friday – but instead of the Friday links I have the story of a giant post earthquake debris flow in the Wenchuan area for you. As I already announced in my last post about the field trip to the Wenchuan earthquake epicenter in frame of the International Symposium on Mega-Earthquake Induced Geo-disasters and Long Term Effects in Chengdu, China, I still wanted to blog about the Qipan gully debris flow that we also visited during the field trip. After giving you some background information I will take you on the hike with us. We will first see massive destruction in the residential area and then have a look at the debris flow deposits and some mitigation structures while climbing up the gully. Come on, let’s go! more

In my last post I blogged about the International Symposium on Mega Earthquake Induced Geo-disasters and Long Term Effects in Chengdu, China, and now I want to report about one of the field trips that I participated after the symposium. While we spent the morning and early afternoon at the Qipan gully to look at a giant debris flow that occurred five years after the earthquake, in the afternoon we had the chance to visit the memorial site of the 2008 Mw 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake, which is basically the collapsed building of a middle school close to the epicenter that was left as it was after the earthquake. I want to report about this site first because it is more about the earthquake itself. In my next post I will report about the Qipan gully debris flow. more

From May 8 – 13, 2015 the 4th International Symposium on Mega Earthquake Induced Geo-disasters and Long Term Effects was held in Chengdu, China, at the 7th anniversary of the M_w 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake that occurred on May 12, 2008. Since Chengdu was basically on my way back from the Fucino 2015 PATA Days in Italy to my working place in Beijing, I was in the lucky situation to be able to participate the symposium and drive away the post-PATA-blues with exciting talks, discussions and field trips that obtained a new dimension of relevance in face of the April 25 Nepal earthquake. I thought this meeting might be interesting for the paleoseismicity community and as Christoph told me, the current example of the Nepal quake that apparently didn’t produce any surface rupture shows again the importance of earthquake environmental effects (EEEs) for paleoseismologists. So I decided to put together a little report about the symposium and in a coming post I also want to share a report and some pictures from the post-symposium field trips. more