Christoph Grützner

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Makran Earthquake and Tsunami. On 27 November, 1945, an earthquake of magnitude Mw8.1 occurred at the Makran Subduction Zone offshore Pakistan. A large tsunami was triggered that reached the coasts of Pakistan, Iran, India, and Oman. The quake and the waves left approx. 4,000 people dead. A new book collects interviews with survivors. The book has been published by the UNESCO through its Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission and is available for free download here. more

Karachi is the most populated city in Pakistan with around 24,000,000 inhabitants – just as many as Australia. Since many years a nuclear power plant (NPP) is located just a few miles outside the city at the shore. Ongoing work on new reactors with Chinese help has recently sparked outrage and media coverage. Concerns are that any accidents at the NPP might have dramatic consequences and threaten millions of people. I searched the recent scientific literature on seismic and tsunami hazard for Karachi…

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On 28 February, an earthquake of M_W4.4 occurred in the Fucino Basin in Central Italy. The event did not cause any damage and was not widely felt. Such an earthquake is nothing special for this area, but it’s interesting because from 19-24 April the 6th INQUA meeting on paleoseismology will be held in Pescina. The conference will bring together scientists from all around the world to discuss latest developments in active tectonics, paleoseismology and similar topics, and its date and location were chosen to commemorate the devastating Fucino earthquake of 1915. This quake left more than 33,000 people dead and was one of the largest earthquakes to hit the Mediterranean in modern history. It was also subject to a number of paleoseismological studies (see links below). more

The 31^st International Association of Sedimentologists Meeting of Sedimentology will be held in Krakow, Poland from 22 – 25 June, 2015.

The session “Application of sedimentary records in coastal environments for natural hazard assessment” aims on  gathering contributions that document the application of sedimentary records of coastal changes (sea level changes) and disasters (storms, tsunamis) into coastal hazard assessment, as well as to present studies focusing on reconstructions of extreme coastal events in the past.

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The Colloquium on “Historical Earthquakes of the Rhine Graben and Interplate – Intraplate Continental Deformation: From archives to comparative seismotectonics” will be held from 11-13 May 2015 in Strasbourg (Inst. de Physique du Globe). The second circular is out now with more details on the programme, download the PDF here.
Deadline for abstracts is 27 March 2015.

A new book on the Dead Sea Transform has been published by Springer:

DEAD SEA TRANSFORM FAULT SYSTEM: REVIEWS

Together with Prof. Zvi Garfunkel and Prof. Zvi Ben-Avraham, I am a co-editor of this book. The book focuses on various aspects of the fault system, from geophysics, to tectonics, paleolimnology, hydrology, seismicity, and PALEOSEISMICITY. Most relevant to this blog are the papers by Agnon and by Marco & Klinger.

• Shmulik Marco and Yann Klinger review in a new light the on-fault paleoseismic studies carried out along the DST.
• Amotz Agnon delves into the off-fault seismite archives (lake, cave).

Here is a link to the book on the Springer site: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-94-017-8872-4

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It’s been a while since the last update on paleoseismology literature. BSSA’s latest issue has some interesting studies that you should check, and there’s even more to discover. Also, there is some new work on (paleo-)tsunamis and historic large earthquakes. If you feel that important new papers are missing, drop us a mail! more

The 26th IUGG meeting will be held in Prague from 22 June – 2 July, 2015. Deadline for abstracts is 31 January, early bird registration ends 10 April.

The IUGG-IASPEI symposium 8b – Lithospheric Stress and Strain: Observations and Modeling invites contributions in the field of paleoseismology (and other disciplines). The symposium is chaired by Oliver Heidbach, Marco Bohnhoff and Kevin Furlong. more

Spain may not be as famous for its earthquakes as Greece, Turkey or Italy, but significant events do shake the western part of the Mediterranean, too. Numerous paleoseismological and archaeoseismological studies as well as research on historical quakes have been undertaken on the Iberian peninsula. A new book was now published by the IGME which collects all the information currently available on the geological effects of earthquakes in Spain. The book is in Spanish and available for free download here:

http://www.igme.es/Publicaciones/PubliGratuitas.htm

The catalogue includes 44 quakes between 218 BC and AD 2011.

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January seems to be the month of deadlines. Abstracts for the EGU2015 must be submitted until 7 January and there are two more deadlines that paleoseismicity.org readers should consider: more