RWTH Aachen University seeks, as soon as possible,
a geoscientist (f/m) with a background in neotectonics, GIS and Remote Sensing skills for a PhD position in the research project ALMOND („Albania and Montenegro Neotectonic Deformation“). This project is a collaboration between RWTH Aachen University and the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena and is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
The 16 World Conference on Earthquake Engineering will be held from 9-13 January, 2017, in Santiago de Chile. Note that the deadline for short abstracts submission is 23 November, 2015! Abstracts can be submitted via this link.
This meeting comes with a number of sessions which are interesting for earthquake geologists, paleoseismologists and those of us who deal with seismic hazard assessments. Among them: more
The first part of my report on the field work that I did in Kazakhstan this year focussed on the stuff we had done in the South. Here is part II which is all about the Dzhungarian Fault. You’ve never heard about this fault? That’s easily possible. There are only very few papers that deal with this fault. In the 1960s Soviet geologist V.S. Voytovich published results from extensive field work on this fault (Voytovich, 1965; 1969). 40-50 years later a few studies on geodesy and geodynamics covered the broader study area and Shen et al. (2003) did some work in the Chinese part of the fault, but it took until 2013 before Campbell et al. revisited the Kazakh side and came up with new field data. They focussed on the tectonic geomorphology of this structure and determined a slip rate. Given this little amount of research done one would assume that the fault is not very large and of minor importance, but the opposite is true. The fault is around 300 km long in its Kazakh section and probably twice as long in total! more
A few days ago, SRL published a special issue on the Gorkha earthquakes with lots of interesting papers. I especially like the work of Angster et al. with their impressive photos of the earthquake ground effects. Make sure to download the electronic supplement to this article!
Besides this special issue, a good number of other interesting papers have been published recently on paleoseismicity, active tectonics, seismic hazard, and tsunamis. Among them is Andi’s work on the Ejina basin and Serva et al. with a introduction of using the ESI scale for earthquake hazard assessments. Enjoy reading! more
I’ve spent several weeks in Eastern Kazakhstan this summer for paleoseismological field work. During the first part of this trip we looked at some thrust and strike-slip faults in the Ili Basin and the Saty area. The second part was almost entirely devoted to study the Dzhungarian Fault. I’ll blog about this second part later. Eleanor, David, Austin and me were the UK representatives in our team. We were so lucky to have Kanatbek from Kyrgyzstan and Aydin from Kazakhstan with us. They did not only lead us to all the interesting places and helped us to understand the geology and the tectonics, but they also did a fanatastic job organizing the field trip and dealing with the local surprises, which as you know happen in basically every field trip.
Our first study site was located at the northern boundary of the Ili Basin, where we did some work last year already. more
Several new studies have been published recently on old earthquakes and their geological footprint – time to list them and to recommend reading. Additionally, today’s paper digest also lists several articles which are not about paleoseismology, but geoethics. These papers were published in a special volume of GSL. They cover subjects that many paleoseismologists will have dealt with in the past or are likely to deal with in the future – seismic risk perception, science communication, public outreach, and communicating uncertainties. One paper is dedicated to the L’Aquila trial. I find it very telling that this issue is not open access. Obviously, strengthening “public trust in geosciences” has still a long way to go…
Here are the latest papers:
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.
The following very interesting mail reached us by Abdelkrim Aoudia from the ICTP in Trieste (Italy):
Three Postdoctoral positions in paleoseismology and seismology
are available at the Earth System Physics (ESP) section of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). The two first positions (A and B) are funded by the GENERALI Group– a major player in the global insurance industry, in the framework of a research project integrating earthquake fault studies and simulations of the ground-motion.
The third position (C) is funded in the framework of an international collaborative effort following the recent Nepal Gorkha 2015 earthquake. The research topic involves a study of the structure, dynamics and seismicity of Nepal Himalaya.
Greece is a Disneyland for neotectonics and active faulting research. Some of the most important findings in earthquake science have been achieved in Greece, its historical catalogue is one of the longest on Earth, and paleoseismology, archaeoseismology & tsunami studies are abundant. These are many good reasons to consider registration for the 14th Int’l Conference of the Geological Society of Greece (Thessaloniki, May 25-27, 2016), especially since the programme is full of earthquake science stuff. The deadline for submitting papers is September 30.
Summer time is publishing time! Lots of new papers are out, today we have
Enjoy reading and tell us if something is missing!
Pa·le·o·seis·mic·i·ty [ pālē·ə·sīz·mĭs′ĭ·tē ] noun, plural -ties. Ancient earthquake activity.
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