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It’s already December and 2021 is finally coming to an end – although it felt like two years. Anyway, here’s the last list of papers for this year. It includes a great review article on paleoseismology and a new IAEA tecdoc for surface displacement hazard. Plus, lots of cool other studies. Enjoy reading!

The South Caspian Basin (SCB) is an aseismic block that moves independently to its surroundings. Together with the Arabia-Eurasia collision, it controls the active tectonics of Turkmenistan. The directions, rates, and rotation poles of the SCB relative to Iran and Eurasia are not well resolved. In a new paper recently published in TECTONICS, we constrain the motion of the SCB by measuring the slip rate of the Main Kopeh Dagh Fault (MKDF) in Turkmenistan. Here’s what we found:

A new special issue has been published in Frontiers. While most of paleoseismological studies deal with onshore faults for obvious reasons, this collection of 15 studies is all about offshore faults. The papers are of course full of wonderful high-resolution bathymetry data and shallow seismic profiles, but they also deal with the important question of how to implement these data into seismic hazard assessments and how to deal with the patchy fault information. The study areas cover marine settings and lacustrine environments.

This months we have a lot of studies on Mediterranean tectonics, first of all from Italy, and many papers on China and the US. Besides, there are some interesting methodological studies and research from areas that had recent seismic crises such as Puerto Rico and Thessaly. Enjoy reading!

A new Special Issue has just been published in the Journal of South American Earth Sciences: Hazardous Faults in Latin America. The issue contains 16 research papers and an editorial. It was edited by Carlos Costa and Laurence Audin. The issue collects highly interesting contributions from all across the continent. Although subduction megaquakes on the Chilean Trench come with the highest magnitudes, onshore faults pose a significant hazard and historical events have had catastrophic consequences. Also, studying crustal earthquakes and faults is a pre-requisite for understanding crustal deformation, mountain building, and the landscape response to tectonics. Read the Special Issue now, because all papers are free to access via ScienceDirect until 20 Jan 2022.

A new special issue has been published in MDPI’s Geosciences. The collection “New Perspectives in the Definition/Evaluation of Seismic Hazard through Analysis of the Environmental Effects Induced by Earthquakes” collects five review papers, 13 research articles, and an editorial. The SI was edited by Sabina Porfido, Giuliana Alessio, Germana Gaudiosi, and Rosa Nappi. The volume is also available as a book. Download the flyer as a pdf here.

Western Slovenia hosts well-known active strike-slip faults, which accommodate the northward motion of the Adriatic Plate. So far, very little was known about large earthquakes on those faults. This is mainly due to the low slip rates. In a new paper we present geomorphological, geophysical, and paleoseismological data from the Idrija and Predjama Faults, which are among the longest faults in the area. We show that tectonic geomorphology and paleoseismology are really complicated in this kind of geological setting, but we also present data that indicate strong earthquakes during the Holocene. Here’s a short summary of what we did and what we found:

Only one month has gone and the list of new papers is again quite long. We have classic paleoseismology, a number of studies on historical earthquakes, some cool tsunami stuff, and a few more general papers on earthquake geology; plus: an inspiring article by Jim and Eldon on the science and the business of paleoseismology. Enjoy reading!

For most of us the summer break is over and teaching, field work, and office work is starting again or has already started. Time to catch up with the latest papers I suppose! This time we have quite a lot of “classical” paleoseismology in our list, but also plenty of interesting remote sensing and tsunami stuff. Enjoy reading!

In a recently published open access paper in TECTONICS, Zebari et al. report for the first time fault slip rates from Iraqi Kurdistan in the NW Zagros Fold-Thrust Belt. This area is challenging when it comes to narrowing down the distribution of S-N shortening and the associated fault slip rates, because in general, faults don’t reach the surface there. For this reason, we used a proxy: we dated uplifted river terraces with stimulated luminescence and used kinematic modelling of the Zagros fold belt. With this approach we can show that slip rate of the Mountain Front Fault is about 1.5 mm/a. Detachment folds take up another ~1.6 mm/a.