Posts in the category »  Field work «  ( 30 Posts )

  • 2023 International Summer School on Rockslides and Related Phenomena in the Kokomeren River Basin (Kyrgyzstan) (ICL Kokomeren Summer School)

    Alexander Strom and Kanatbek Abdrakhmatov will run their famous summer school again after it had to be cancelled due to Covid-19. The summer school is designed for students and will take place from 14-29 August, 2023, in Kyrgyzstan. The topics include mass movements, neotectonics, and geomorphology in the epicentral area of the M7.2 1992 Suusamyr Earthquake. Find all the details in the announcement below.

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  • Tutorial by Ian Pierce: combining SfM photogrammetry with the iPad lidar for better results

    Structure-from-Motion is now a standard technique for documenting outcrops and paleoseismic trenches. It is also widely used in archaeology, architecture, disaster response, etc. In a perfect world, we would always have lots of well-known ground control points (GCPs) for our 3D models, for example by using a differential GPS. However, quite often we can’t do that because we don’t have a dGPS, because we stumbled upon an outcrop by accident, because we don’t want to carry the tripod to the top of a summit, etc. The problem is that without GCPs we might end up with funny errors in our model. Ian Pierce has written a tutorial about how to overcome many of these problems by combining SfM with the scans of the iPad’s and iPhone’s built-in lidar sensor: https://neotectonic.github.io/posts/iOS_Surveying/

    Thanks Ian!!

  • Trenching season is ongoing!

    Following an un-systematic post-dinner doomscrolling I’m happy to declare May 2022 as the trenchiest month ever. Here’s some exhibits:

    Safety first; if cozy and comfy it’s better.

    The award goes to Stéphane Baize (@Stef_EQ_Geology) and their trenches along the Cévennes fault: look at the details in the photo… like “paleo” engraved in the wooden frame to prevent collapse of the trench wall. And what about the tent? 10/10 professional style.

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    Landscape photography award

    The winner is Colca Canyon in Southern Peru, take a look at the pictures by Anderson Palomino (@AndersonRPT1) and Carlos Benavente (@clbenavente)

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    Best flower structure award

    No doubts here, easy win for Ian Pierce (@neotectonic) and their trenches in Azerbaijan. Follow him for stunning field photos and videos.

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    Mud club

    Mention goes to Jade Humprey (@ForFaultsSake).

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    The tricks of the trade.

    Learn them from Jonathan Obrist-Farner (@guateologist) uncovering the mysteries of the 1976 Motagua rupture in Guatemala

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    Category “You don’t need a trench to find good stratigraphy”.

    Prize goes to Gabriel Easton Vargas (@geastonvargas) and paleotsunami research in semiarid Chile

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    Category “Let’s the student do the work”.

    Terrific exhibit by Shreya Arora (@shryaarora) trenching in the Himalaya region

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    Never without a nijiri gama.

    Award is won by Sambit Prasanajit (@SPrasanajit) and their sites in S. Korea

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    Fancy fence

    The winner is PhD student Argelia Silva Fragoso (@Argy_sf) from Insubria university, digging trenches in Central Italy

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    Sorry if I missed someone, I wish you all a safe and fruitful field season!

  • New results from the GREBAL Project – Traces of Pleistocene earthquakes in the Baltic Basin

    The recognition of sedimentological traces of earthquakes in the form of seismites within Pleistocene sediments is the main objective of the GREBAL project (Recognition of traces left by earthquakes in Pleistocene sediments affected by glacio- isostatic rebound in the Baltic Sea Basin). The investigations focus primarily on Poland, Germany, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Project leader Małgorzata (Gosia) Pisarska-Jamroży has summed up new results from this international research effort.

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  • Quaternary sea-level change along the coastline of Oman

    Text: Gösta Hoffmann with contributions by Michaela Falkenroth, Valeska Decker, Bastian Schneider and Christoph Grützner

    The beaches in Oman are pristine.” What sounds like an introductory sentence to a tourist brochure has scientific significance. Natural conditions without anthropogenic overprint are characteristic for vast stretches along the 1700 km coastline of Oman from the Strait of Hormuz in the north to the border of Yemen in the south. This situation allows geological research addressing Quaternary sea-level change on various timescales spanning from minutes to millennia. Over the last couple of years, we carried out research funded by the Omani Government and the German Research Foundation (DFG). Our findings are currently published in a series of papers (Schneider et al. 2018; Ermertz et al. 2019; Falkenroth et al. 2019, subm.; Hoffmann et al. 2020a, b) and are briefly summarised here.

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  • Postdoc position at Oxford University: Palaeoseismology of Central Asian Earthquake Ruptures

    There is a wonderful, amazing, extraordinary postdoc position open at Oxford University: Palaeoseismology of Central Asian Earthquake Ruptures.

    We seek to appoint a postdoctoral research assistant to undertake investigations of large earthquakes within the interior of Asia. The post is part of a project funded by the Leverhulme Trust called EROICA. The successful candidate will work closely with Professor Richard Walker, and will join a vibrant community of active tectonics researchers in Oxford within the Earthquake Geology and Geodesy group.

    The researcher will be responsible for the detailed mapping of palaeo-earthquake ruptures, the construction of slip distributions from individual earthquakes, the analysis of high-resolution satellite imagery, the construction of digital topographic models, and the selection of sites for long-term slip-rate determination using field investigation. The PDRA will also be involved in planning and carrying out fieldwork to verify remote-sensing observations, to collect samples for dating, and to excavate and interpret palaeo-seismic trenches. We expect the researcher to help in supervising doctoral and masters student research projects, in addition to undertaking their own research.

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  • A creeping intracontinental thrust fault in the Tien Shan

    The Tien Shan takes up about 20 mm/yr of N-S shortening as a result of the India-Eurasia convergence. Recent paleoseismological studies have shown that the shortening is accommodated by a large number of faults, whose slip rates are relatively low. Although the historical earthquake catalogues only reach back a few hundred years, we know that the Tien Shan has seen some of the strongest intracontinetal quakes world-wide with magnitudes exceeding M8. Paleoseismological studies have revealed a large number of surface-rupturing earthquakes, too. But the question is: Do all these known faults rupture in strong earthquakes? In a recent paper, my colleagues and I argue that there is at least one major fault in the Northern Tien Shan that is creeping (Mackenzie et al., 2018). more

  • Large landslide in the epicentral area of the 1889 Chilik M8 Earthquake, Kazakhstan

    A large landslide occurred in SE Kazakhstan near the town of Saty (Саты), TengriNews.kz reports. The slide is about 900 m wide, 1700 m long, and has an estimated volume of ~50,000,000 m³.   Apparently nobody was harmed, but the now slow-moving landslide mass approaches Kolsai river. The road to Kolsai lake (a landslide lake) is blocked. Images and videos from the area show what may be a thick layer of loess that moved downhill after heavy rain. more

  • Report: Coseismic Effects of the 21 August 2017 Isola di Ischia Earthquake

    On 21 August an MD4.0 earthquake hit the Island of Ischia, Italy. The event occurred at a depth of only ~2 km. Despite the low magnitude, the earthquake had dramatic consequences, and two people were killed by collapsing houses. The INGV EMERGEO working group and CNR-IAMC have now published a report on the coseismic effects of this earthquake, which include ground cracks and mass movements. The full report can be found at earthquakegeology.com or downloaded as a pdf here (3.15 MB).

    Please cite the report as: EMERGEO Working Group, Nappi et al. (2017). The august 21, 2017 Isola di Ischia (Casamicciola) earthquake: Coseismic effects, doi:10.5281/zenodo.1003188

  • Report on the Camerino 2017 INQUA Field Trip to the Central Apennine fault system

    Report on the International Field Trip “From 1997 to 2016: three destructive earthquakes along the Central Apennine fault system”, 19th-22nd July 2017, Italy

    Website: http://convegni.unicam.it/TDEq_centralItaly ( including program and abstracts, field trip guidebook and list of participants)

    Authors: Chiara Frigerio1, Alessandro Maria Michetti1, Francesca Ferrario1, Franz Livio1, Emanuele Tondi2

    1Università dell’Insubria, Dipartimento di Scienza ed Alta Tecnologia, Como, Italia

    2Università di Camerino, Sezione di Geologia, Scuola di Scienze e Tecnologie, Italia more