A recent study presented at the GSA meeting concludes that the UNESCO World Heritage site of Machu Picchu in Peru was intentionally built on faulted bedrock in order to ease the quarrying of the huge blocks used as construction material (Menegat, 2019). But has Machu Picchu seen big earthquakes in its lifetime? And if so, can it tell us something about their magnitude? After all, there are plenty of earthquakes in Peru, not only at the subduction zone but also in the Andes (e.g., Wimpenny et al., 2018). Some strong instrumental events occurred less than 100 km away from the Inca site. However, in the area of Machu Picchu we knew little about strong earthquakes. That’s why in 2016 a group of researchers from Peru, France, and the UK including myself started to investigate the active faults around Cusco and archaeoseismological damage to Machu Picchu and other famous Inca sites nearby in the CUSCO-PATA project.
moreShopping is stressful, reading new papers is exciting. Why not lean back in your favourite comfy chair, enjoy a hot tea and see what’s new in paleoseismology and related fields? These are the latest papers on paleoseismology, earthquakes, and active tectonics.
moreText: 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.
moreToday we have a number of studies on “classic” paleoseismology, but also a fair share of tsunami and historical seismicity/archaeoseismology research. Plus, some very interesting papers on methods and concepts. Not to forget the first one in the list that presents an extremely useful surface rupture database. I may write a long blog post on this one, soon. Enjoy reading!
morePress note related to the publication of the manuscript “Earthquake crisis unveils the growth of an incipient continental fault system” in Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11064-5).
An international team led by the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC, Barcelona) demonstrate the growth of a young fault in the Alboran Sea, called the Al-Idrissi Fault System, source of the magnitude (Mw) 6.4 earthquake, which affected Al-Hoceima, Melilla and the south of the Iberian Peninsula in January 2016.
moreThe Seismological Society of America has currently three interesting calls for papers.
Pa·le·o·seis·mic·i·ty [ pālē·ə·sīz·mĭs′ĭ·tē ] noun, plural -ties. Ancient earthquake activity.
Paleoseismicity.org is a page dedicated to scientists and everyone else interested in paleoseismology, archeoseismology, neotectonics, earthquake archeology, earthquake engineering and related topics. Different authors irregularly write about recent papers, field work, problems, conferences or just interesting things that they come across. We intend to provide a platform for discussion and scientific exchange. Interested in joining as an author? Please contact us!
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