After I came back from one week of holidays I checked the latest papers. Surprisingly, one was by myself! Finally IOP published our work on combined geoscience techniques in the Orkhon Valley, Central Mongolia. We used Georadar, SQUID-gradiometers, capacitive-coupled geoelectrics, octocopter stereoimages, shallow drillings, datings, and archaeological excavations for an geoarchaeological project. Using geophysical, archaeological and geological observations, we assumed a dating in the Turk/Uighur period (6th–9th century AD) and a re-use under Mongolian reign (12th–17th century AD). This would mean that this site is the furthermost walled structure in the peri-urban area of Khar Balgas. more
Currently I spend my time working on some papers that deal with tsunamis in the Eastern Mediterranean and earthquakes in Spain. Searching for literature and looking for data on the Minoan catastrophe I came across this new open access publication by Simon Jusseret and Manuel Sintubin:
Our colleagues from IGCP567 – Earthquake Archaeology put a lot of effort into getting rid of catastrophism and into making archeoseismology a more reliable, quantitative science. By the way, don’t miss the next workshop on archeoseismology and active tectonics in Mexico 2012! more
It’s holiday season, and many avid readers might need an advice on new books. Here’s one for the earthquake community: Primary Fault by Sharon Kae Reamer. The title reminds you of geology? This is no coincidence. The author reminds you of geology? Right! Sharon Kae Reamer is a seismologist, currently working at the seismological observatory of Cologne University. You probably know her work when you are into archaeoseismology, seismicity in Germany, or seismotectonics. Now she has published her first novel, and seismology does play a role. more
The Journal of Iberian Geology has now published a Special Issue “Active Faults in Iberia“, with J.J. Martínez-Diaz, E. Masana, and M.A. Rodríguez-Pascua as guest editors: J Iber Geol, 38 (1), 201. This volume comprises a great collection of new data on active faults, paleoseismology, intraplate earthquakes, and seismic hazard. One article also introduces the Quaternary Active Faults Database of Iberia. And the best thing is – all articles are open access and available for download! more
Two new paper have recently been published on the Tohoku Tsunami that devastated the Japanese coast in March, 2011.
In Sedimentary Geology, Chagué-Goff et al. published their results from investigations of chemical markers left by the waves in March, 2011. The authors sampled the tsunamites two, five and seven months after the event and determined the concentrations of chemical markers such as C, Ca, Cl, K, N, S, and Sr. more
Three papers published recently caught my eyes. First, Andrej Gosar investigated the earthquake environmental effects (EEEs) of the 12 April 1998 Mw =5.6 Krn Mountains earthquake, Slovenia. The quake measured VII-VIII on the EMS-98 scale, and Andrej found that the intensities reached the same values on the ESI2007 scale. He reports that the intensity distributions for both scales are comparable, but show some differences due to the sparsely populated epicentral area. The research concentrated on rockfalls for EEE determination. It’s a nice example that also moderate events can be characterized using the ESI2007 scale.
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I hope you have reserved some time for reading – here comes plenty of great new material on one of the most interesting tectonic features on earth, the Dead Sea Transform. The Israel Journal of Earth Sciences has published a special issue: The Dead Sea Rift as a natural laboratory for neotectonics and paleoseismology, Volume 58, Number 3 – 4. The papers are an outcome of the 2009 INQUA joint Israel/Jordan fieldtrip with the same name. I was lucky enough to have participated in that field trip. It was for sure one of the best field trips I ever had. more
The Royal Society of London ‘for Improving Natural Knowledge’, the world’s oldest scientific publisher, made its journal archive permanently free to access online. The first edition of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society appeared in 1665. Now, the archive contains more than 60000 papers. Here are the links to the press news and to the searchable archive.
Among the many papers of potential interest, I found the following two: “Observations on the parallel roads of Glen Roy, and other parts of Lochaber in Scotland, with an attempt to prove that they are of marine origin“, by a rather young Charles Darwin (1839) and “On the small vertical movements of a stone laid on the surface of the ground” (1901), where 2 mm/y “subsidence” was found through a smart and accurate mechanical approach (at least till when the stone disappeared). I stop here to not ruin your curiosity, but you can read more.
Based on a new inversion of InSAR data, De Natale et al. predicted that the Avezzano and Sulmona tectonic domains, in Central Italy, may anticipate by 15-20 yr the next large earthquake, as a result of stress transfer. Avezzano and Sulmona were razed by a large earthquake in 1915 and 1706, respectively.
Giuseppe De Natale, Bruno Crippa, Claudia Troise and Folco Pingue. Abruzzo, Italy, Earthquakes of April 2009: Heterogeneous Fault-Slip Models and Stress Transfer from Accurate Inversion of ENVISAT-InSAR Data. Bull. Seism. Soc. Am., 101(5), 2340-2354, 2011. DOI: 10.1785/0120100220.
A new paper published in Natural Hazards today discusses post-depositional changes of tsunamites. At sites in Thailand covered by sediments of the 2004 Sumatra tsunami, Szczuciński (2011) has documented significant changes in the deposits over the last seven years. Not only were the tsunamites altered, eroded or re-deposited by animals and seasonal rain, but also vanished in certain cases.
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