Christoph Grützner

Our new paper on lake Ohrid was published in the ZDGG: Reicherter, K., Hoffmann, N., Lindhorst, K., Krastel, S., Fernandez-Steeger, T.M., Grützner, C., Wiatr, T. 2011. Active basins and neotectonics: morphotectonics of the Lake Ohrid Basin (FYROM and Albania). Z. dt. Ges. Geowiss 162 (2), 217 -234. more

This week’s Friday links are almost entirely earthquake related.

On James’ Empty Blog you can find some scary but interesting videos from the Japan tsunami area.

The 3rd INQUA-IGCP567 international workshop on paleoseismology and archeoseismology will take place in Mexico in November 2012. It’s the 100th anniversary of the Acambay Earthquake.

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The public version of the EEE Catalogue,  a global catalogue of environmental effects induced by modern, historical and paleoearthquakes, is available at http://www.eeecatalog.sinanet.apat.it/terremoti/index.php. This public version has been developed on Google Earth and aims at providing basic information at earthquake, locality and site level, including the rupture zones (when available) and the local description of environmental effects, integrated by some imagery (photographs, stratigraphic logs, etc.). more

Cyprus explosion caused an M3.0 earthquake: On 11 July, a catastrophe took place in southern Cyprus. 2,000 tons of amunition confiscated from an Iranian ship on its way to Syria exploded. 13 people were killed and the military base and a neighbouring power plant were destroyed. Seismographs have registered the shock as an earthquake with magnitude ML3.0.

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This week’s centerfault is a very prominent one that you will know for sure – the Dead Sea Fault. The sinistral strike-slip fault marks the boundary between the Arabian plate and the Sinai. The entire system is more than 600 km long and has accommodated ~107 km of slip since Miocene. Magnitude 7 is no problem for this structure and the recurrence intervalls are short. more

The most exciting news this week surely were the media reports that a tsunami destroyed ancient Olympia in Greece, hundreds of years ago. Andreas Vött from Mainz University published a press release at the end of June about his research. Unfortunately, I have only found media coverage in German. The results will be presented at the Corinth2011 conference (registration still open)! more

The preliminary report on the Lorca Mw5.1 earthquake from 11 May 2011 is now also available in English! The quake caused a lot of damages to building despite the relatively low magnitude. One building collapsed and nine people died. The report summarized the geological background, environmental earthquake effects and damaged infrastructure. more

This day’s Centerfault is one of the longest and best investigated faults in Spain, the sinistral Carboneras Fault Zone (CFZ) in Andalusia (36.85°N, 2.25°W). In the north, the CFZ is bounded by the Palomares fault, its southern tip reaches the Gulf of Almería. The NE-SW striking fault zone stretches over 50 km onshore and additional 100 km offshore (Gràcia et al., 2006) and is, therefore, capable of earthquakes with magnitudes > 7. It is one of the three major strike-slip faults in the Betics (Bell et al., 1997). more

Some good articles came up last week, and two interesting things happened in northwestern Europe. A small earthquake (M2.7-M3.4) hit northern Netherlands in the Groningen area and people claimed light house damages despite the low magnitude. The event was caused by natural gas production. The gas company, Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM), even has an online-formular for that! more

Yesterday, British media reported on a small tsunami that hit southwestern England at 10.15 BST. Wave heights reached around 30 cm in some bays but didn’t cause damages, BBC reports. Scientists from Plymouth University claimed an offshore landslide responsible for the rare phenomenon. The waves were seen in Cornawall, Devon and Hampshire. more