The most important paleoseismology event of the year is just a few days ahead and we’re all excited to meet in sunny Italy. The 6th INQUA International Workshop on Active Tectonics Paleoseismology and Archaeoseismology will be held from 19-24 April 2015 in Pescina, Fucino Basin, Italy. The meeting will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the devastating 1915 Fucino earthquake. Make sure to check the final program which is now available for download at the meeting website: download here (PDF, 9 mb).
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Good news for the late birds – the abstracts deadline for the Colloquium on “Historical Earthquakes of the Rhine Graben and Interplate – Intraplate Continental Deformation: From archives to comparative seismotectonics” has been postponed to 3 April.
The meeting will be held from 11-13 May 2015 in Strasbourg (Inst. de Physique du Globe). The second circular is out with more details on the programme, download the PDF here.
From 16-18 July, 2015, an interesting workshop will be held at ETH Zurich (Switzerland): Submarine Paleoseismology – Using giant piston coring within IODP to fill the gap in long-term records of great earthquakes.
Michael Strasser, one of the main organizer, names the aims of the workshop: “The main topic of the workshop is to discuss and define a strategy how and where we could best make use of giant piston coring efforts within the Integrated Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) to make some major advancements in submarine paleoseismology to constrain earthquake recurrence beyond historical times.” more
What’s new in paleoseismology and active tectonics research? Here’s my latest digest of some recently published papers. As always, please feel free to point out ones that I’ve missed. more
Last Friday the RAS held a discussion meeting on Tectonics from Above: Recent Advances in the Use of High-resolution Topography and Imagery in London. Almost the entire Cambridge Tectonics Group went there and I absolutely enjoyed the meeting and the discussion with friends and colleagues mainly from the UK and from France. The speakers reported on open-source software for producing high-res DEMs, advances in aerial and satellite imagery, new techniques in remote sensing, and latest developments in fault/offset mapping. The meeting was supported by NERC, COMET+ and LICS. more
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 MW4.4 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 31st 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.
