This beautiful, isolated rock stands in the Alkyonides Gulf, the northwestern part of the Gulf of Corinth. It has some beautiful notches, which indicate recent uplift. It is situated right on the footwall of an active fault, which was activated during the 1981 earthquake sequence. It is not so easy to use those notches as sea level indicators or for measuring tectonic movements if both effects have to be taken into account. The fault has a huge throw and a beautiful scarp (limestone) with lots of slickensides. One of my favourite places in Greece. Well, the entire Perachora peninsula is worth a visit – an earthquake geologist’s Disney Land!
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Delphi is one of the most impressive places I’ve ever seen. The landscape is just breathtaking – the archaeological site is situated on the southern flank of the Parnassus Mountains, dominating the entire valley. You can see the Gulf of Corinth right from the temples, and due to the steep slope you feel like Delphi is built on many floors with the stadium being the roof. The oracle might be related to faults under the temple; some authors speculate that gas vents (ethane?) caused hallucinations of the priest, which were interpreted as the oracle. Another nice thing is that you can see the archaeoseismological damage from strong historical earthquakes everywhere – cracks, rotated and tilted walls, corner break-outs, dropped keystones in arches and so on. more
In Evelyn’s one-picture-per-day-to-save-some-time-before-Christmas-series, my contribution today is from the Canyonlands, Utah. It’s a view to the north from Needles Outpost campsite, directly at the boarder of the National Park. The reddish sandstones give a beautiful contrast to the dark-blue sky. The picture was taken during the night, there were always that incredible view and millions of stars. No comparison to light-polluted Germany! The tents, which have been our home for three weeks, were completely messed with the ubiquitous red dust after that three weeks… more
I took this picture in an iron-nickel mine in Albania. Here we see the contact between the underlying ultramafics and the carbonates on top. The fluids circulated in the mafics and the iron-nickel ores are trapped at the lithological boundary. The ore is shiny green and occurs in hundreds of small bands in a small area along the contact only. I love this picture because the contact is so sharp. A fault zone nearby bears very beautiful conglomerates which I always wanted to have for my bathroom…
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Here’s the Wednesday Geology Picture as part of Evelyn’s meme. Close to the Arches National Park in Utah there is Potash, a bizarre place with saltworks that shimmer in incredible colours. Here, salt is leached from the underground and then dried in the sun. The roads that lead to the Dead Horse State Park have to cross little creeks at times, where the salt precipitated and formed glittering crystals. I had the opportunity to do some research in that area with my great colleagues Heijn and Michael in May this year. more
Following Evelyn’s suggestions, I will post random geology pics this week. Lake Marathon in Attica, Greece is providing a significant amount of the drinking water needed for the broader Athens region, where almost 40% of the 11 million Greeks live. Built between 1926 and 1929, the dam is 54 m high and 285 m long. The reservoir has a maximum volume of 41,000,000 m³ of water. Interesting is that the entire dam and the associated maintenance buildings are cased with the famous marble from the close-by Penteli mountains. I’ve been there during a great student’s excursion in 2007. more
A new job announcement was posted some couple of days ago: the University of Lisbon offers two post-doctoral research positions for up to 5 years. Application submission opens this Wednesday, 7 December and closes on 13 January 2012.
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The University of Cologne (Seismological Station Bensberg) invites applications for an open position as a Doctoral Student. An essential part of the research activities of the candidate will be dedicated to his/her work on a dissertation project. This work will be part of a research project on Archaeoseismological Studies in Midea and Tiryns, Greece concerned with the possible seismogenic cause of the decline of the great Mycenaean palaces of the Argolis.
Dear colleagues,
We would like to bring your attention to a special session at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Seismological Society of America (17-19 April, 2012, San Diego, California):”Earthquakes and Tsunamis at Coastal Archaeological Sites”.
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Dear colleagues,
We would like to bring your attention to a special session at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Seismological Society of America (17-19 April, 2012, San Diego, California): “Macroseismic Effects in Recent and Ancient Earthquakes and their Relationship to Ground Motion Parameters”. more
