These are the latest papers on paleoseismology, active tectonics, and archaeoseismology. Don’t forget to save the date for the Pata Days in France: 26-30 September, 2022. http://pata-days.org/

A Special Issue is now open for submissions in the journal Land. The topic is “Historical Data for Natural Hazard Risk Mitigation and Land Use Planning“. Deadline for manuscript submissions is 30 September 2022. Guest editors: Fabio Luino, Mariano Barriendos Vallvé, Emmanuel Garnier, Fabrizio Terenzio Gizzi, Ruediger Glaser, Christoph Gruetzner, Walter Palmieri, Sabina Porfido, Heather Sangster, and Laura Turconi.

Here we are with the latest list of papers on paleoseismology and active tectonics, and we start with a surprise: A published paper on the 8 January 2022 Ms 6.9 Menyuan earthquake! A mere three weeks after the event, Yang et al. have already managed to get their rapid report accepted. Spoiler: It includes an offset animal footprint trace in snow! But there’s a lot of other interesting stuff in the list, too – check it out!

Frontiers in Earth Sciences plans to publish a new Special Issue (Research Topic as they call it) on “Seismically deforming active plates above active subduction zones: geological, paleoseismological and geodetic perspectives”. Deadline for abstract submission 31 March, 2022. Guest editors of this SI are Alessandro M. Michetti, James McCalpin, Jenni Robertson, Silvia Brizzi, Jorien van Der Wal, and Marco Meschis.

Which journals do we normally chose for a neotectonics or paleoseismology paper? Sounds like a simple question, but the answer is not straight forward. Often, local journals are a great place, such as The New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics, or society journals such as SRL, BSSA, and Quaternary International. Then there are the usual suspects: JGR, GJI, Tectonics, Tectonophysics, Geomorphology. If the story is a bit bigger we often go for EPSL or even the 4-page journals. Recently, several new players have appeared such as Frontiers or Scientific Reports, and I am also closely following the new diamond open access initiatives We Are Seismica and We Are Tektonika. In 1986, Wiley made an attempt to collect these kinds of studies in one place and launched NEOTECTONICS. Sadly, the journal only saw one single issue and was then discontinued. Today, you don’t find a trace of this journal any more, and searching for the single papers of the issue does not yield any results. Alan Nelson made me aware of the existence of this journal and somehow a copy found its way onto my desk. Here’s the list of papers that was published in the most exclusive of all neotectonics journals:

Happy New Year everyone! May 2022 bring you health and joy, and may you always encounter nice reviewers and great outcrops. Enjoy reading our latest selection of active tectonics & paleoseismology papers.

Soft-sediment deformation structures are often used as evidence for paleo-earthquakes. When several deformed horizons are present, one has to ask whether repeated slope failure at the sediment surface has built-up the stratigraphic record. Another option would be that a single failure event could have concurrently created surficial and sub-surface deformed horizons at different stratigraphic levels. The implications of these differing models are important for the timing of palaeo-earthquakes. In a new paper, Alsop et al. used the late Pleistocene Lisan Formation from the Dead Sea Basin to catalogue and establish key criteria that help distinguish surface versus sub-surface intrastratal deformation of soft-sediments. The paper is available for free for 50 days!

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!

We are happy to announce that the organization of the PATA Days in France has progressed: the conference will occur during the last week of September 2022, i.e. from 26^th (Monday) to 30^th (Friday). Save the dates! PATA stands for Paleoseismology, Active Tectonics, Archaeoseismology and is supported by INQUA‘s TERPRO commission. Learn more about the history of the PATA Days here.

The venue and further details will be fixed in the upcoming weeks. Also, registration is not possible yet. Meanwhile, have a look at the website with info on the programme, the scientific sessions, and the planned excursions: pata-days.org.
See you all in France!

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: