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Today’s list is again very long. It contains a lot of really cool stuff from Central Europe and the Alps, and many interesting studies from China and Central Asia. Connoisseurs of American tectonics will also be happy I promise. Plus, quite a number of papers on methods and earthquake/fault physics in general. Enjoy reading!

A recent study investigated turbidites that preserved in a 457-m deep ICDP drilling from the Dead Sea depocenter. This is the first work to show detailed information on turbidites in the region.

1. Key Points:

• Seismic origin for prehistoric turbidites is established by analyzing the underlying in situ deformation structures for each turbidite
• Data validate a previous hypothesis that soft-sediment deformation formed at the sediment-water interface in the Dead Sea
• The new approach permits a more confident geohazard assessment by improving the completeness of a paleoseismic archive

This time we have a lot of papers on the active tectonics of the Americas, especially along their west coast. Of course on the west coast you say? Sure, but the recent M5.6 in Guyana, a shallow thrust event in a seemingly aseismic area, reminded us that such quakes can basically happen everywhere and at any time – they are just rare and hard to find in the geological record. Enjoy reading!

In 2018, back then when we didn’t even knew about Covid-19, I was sitting in a little restaurant in Slovenia with my happy field team. We were exhausted from another long day of geophysical surveys for our active tectonics project and quite thirsty. A colleague of mine, Philipp Balling, had just finished his field work in Croatia and was on his way north to join us for a few days before he would continue to Jena. He arrived late that evening and we had a great time catching up with each others stories from the field. He showed me a few photos, one of them displaying a huge, flat area at the Croatian coast. I was immediately alerted and asked if the Croatian coast was uplifting, because this thing looked like a marine abrasion platform to me. We chatted about uplifted marine terraces until long after midnight, and this is how the story of this paper began.

Jim McCalpin’s famous “Paleoseismology” is now also available in Chinese. The book was translated by Xu Yueren, Li Wenqiao, and Du Peng.

• Price: 300 Yuan
• ISBN: 978-7-116-12228-4
• Printed in Beijing, October 2020
• Details and where to buy it: https://www.mine999.cn/news/show-415182811.html

By the way, “Палеосейсмология” is also available in Russian: https://www.livelib.ru/book/1001089368-paleosejsmologiya-komplekt-iz-2-knig-cd

Some colleagues told me that 2020 was the most productive year they ever had – without the distraction of field work and meetings they managed to write up a lot of things they’ve had on their desks. Others reported exactly the opposite. In any case, I hope that this year life will go back to normal and I wish you a wonderful 2021.
Here are the latest papers, quite a good start into the next decade. Stay safe!

The 2nd edition of “Tsunamiites – Features and Implications” has just been published by Elsevier. It collects 21 chapters on the sedimentology of tsunamis, written by a team of international scientists. The new edition (1st edition was published in 2008) also includes lessons learned from recent events such as the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. The 482-pages book was edited by Tsunemasa Shiki, Yoshinobu Tsuji, Teiji Yamazaki, and Futoshi Nanayama.

1. Key points

This is the first attempt to apply a computational fluid dynamic modeling-based quantitative “fossil seismograph” to develop a large earthquake record.

The record is calibrated to historic earthquakes, for which the Dead Sea area has a famously long span, and it confirms a clustered earthquake recurrence pattern and a group-fault temporal clustering model.

The record yields much shorter mean recurrence for large (≤ 1.4 kyr vs. 7-11 kyr) and moderate (≤ 500 yr vs. 1600 yr) earthquakes than previously obtained, thus reveals a much higher seismic hazard than previously appreciated on this slow-slipping plate boundary.

This year was truly a roller coaster ride! A large part of the world is still battling Covid-19; meetings, conferences, and workshops are held online, and teaching has also changed a lot. December is usually crowded with deadlines and (virtual) AGU, but I hope you find some time to check out the latest papers on earthquakes, paleoseismology, and active tectonics. We have a great list of papers, this time with exciting news from Italy, New Zealand and the Dead Sea, a lot of historical seismicity studies, and many contributions on Asian tectonics. Stay safe & happy researching!

Currently there are several Special Issues in the making that may be relevant for paleoseismology folk.
Update (2020-11-20): additional SI in Geosciences on morphogenic faulting