Christoph Grützner

The following two reports are from the fieldtrip to lake Patzcuaro by our friends Pedro Huerta and Raúl Pérez López. This excursion marked the end of the Morelia2012 workshop on Active Tectonics, Paleoseismology and Archaeoseismology. more

Good morning y ¡buenos días! from Mexico. The second day with scientific sessions is about to start, and after a fuerte breakfast with beans, tortillas, fruits and Mexican coffee we will move to the Centro Cultural Universitario to listen to the talks. The first morning session will focus on Seismic Hazard: Applications, Engineering and Critical Facilities. The second session is dedicated to Archaeoseismology. In the afternoon, an excursion to the historic city center of Morelia will deal with anti-seismic structures in buildings. more

The 3rd INQUA-IGCP 567 Int’l workshop on Earthquake Geology, Paleoseismology and Archaeoseismology has started here in Morelia, Mexico. We are going to cover the sessions whenever we have time to drop a few lines, however, we can not comment all talks and posters.

[Note: this post was updated on 2012-11-29, see Maria’s comment]

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On Thursday, a new seismometer station was inaugurated in the Cathedral of Aachen, Germany. The station is part of the regional network of the state’s geological survey. During recent reconstruction works, we discovered damages in the cathedral that date back to around AD 800. Cracked walls and repaired floors clearly pointed to earthquake damage. Check out these two papers for more info. Then, the idea came up to install a seismometer directly in the cellar of the Cathedral to monitor seismicity and we are quite happy that its ready now! more

A new paper on the archaeoseismology of Athens, Greece, was published in the Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering by AMraseys and Psycharis. The authors investigated two classical columns at the Akropolis which survived since classical times and modelled the behaviour of the structures under dynamic (seismic) load. They explain observed damages at the columns and also estimate maximum ground movement that would have toppled the columns. It looks like Old Athens has been relatively lucky in terms of earthquakes in the past, despite it is surrounded by active faults… more

The final program of the 3rd INQUA-IGCP 567 Workshop to be held at Morelia (Mexico) from 19 – 23 November 2012 is out now!

Download the pdf here: PROGRAM MORELIA 2012 INQUA WORKSHOP

Check Acambay1912.org for latest news!

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Several new papers were recently published in the fields of tsunami research, tectonics, and liquefaction. Also, a new book on active faults is available. Let’s have a look what can be added to your book shelf or to your Christmas wish list: more

Next year’s European Geosciences Union General Assembly will be held in Vienna, Austria, from 07 – 12 April. As always there will be hundreds of sessions and thousands of scientists, so I’ve put together some recommendations based on my own interest. However, there will be some things that you’ll like, too. more

Since the L’Aquila trial has caused a lot of attention and an outcry of the scientific community, topics like earthquake prediction and earthquake forecasting are widely discussed in blogs and media. Often enough, people that claim to be scientists pretend they could predict earthquakes. These pseudo-predictions are based either on measuring geophysical phenomena (like temperature, gas emissions, electromagnetic fields, light phenomena, sun-moon-earth tidal forces and interactions etc.), animal behaviour (toads, snakes, dogs etc.) or even crazier things (horoscopes, blasphemy, earthquake weapons…). None of these “methods” works. Earthquake prediction is currently not possible. more

Rhett Howell’s WoGE #359 was located in Utah – the Death Hollow is a beautiful example of Navajo sandstone, bordered by two deep canyons and with a very interesting joint system. The site is situated on a huge monocline and part of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. So now it’s my turn again to host the next one. Here’s WoGE#360: more