A recent study investigated disturbances that preserved in the upper 260 m of a 723-m deep core drilled on the crest of a thrust-cored anticline in the western Qaidam Basin, NE Tibet.

1. Key Points:
• We interpret micro-faults, soft-sediment deformation, slumps, and detachment surfaces as paleoearthquake/tectonic indicators
• The core records five seismite clusters between 3.6 and 2.7 Ma, revealing episodic thrusting in relation to intense regional deformation
• During the clusters, regional deformation was concentrated more in the fold-and-thrust system than along regional major strike-slip faults

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!

Ray Weldon from the University of Oregon will talk about How better geology can improve seismic hazard estimates in Kyrgyzstan. The webinar is open for everyone interested and will be held via zoom (https://uni-jena-de.zoom.us/j/8941887790 Meeting-ID: 894 188 7790; Password: 820815).

Date: 22 February, 2021

Time: 3 pm GMT (7 am San Francisco; 3 pm London; 4 pm Berlin & Paris; 8:30 pm Delhi; 9 pm Almaty; 11 pm Beijing)

Following the 2020-12-29 magnitude 6.4 earthquake in Croatia, a late breaking session was accepted by EGU. The session The Dec. 2020 earthquake sequence in Petrinja, Croatia, and its seismotectonic and geodynamic environments will be convened by Stéphane Baize, Sara Amoroso, Lucilla Benedetti, Petra Jamšek Rupnik, Branko Kordić, Snjezana Markušić, and Bruno Pace. The deadline for abstracts is 28 February, 2021. Abstracts need to be send to the conveners by email. You’ll find the email addresses on the session website.

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

The Seismology and Geomorphology group at Bureau of Reclamation in Denver, CO, has just posted announcements for jobs in neotectonics for geologists. These jobs will close when they have received 125 applications. See all details here: https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/591713100

and here: https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/591779300

The recognition of sedimentological traces of earthquakes in the form of seismites within Pleistocene sediments is the main objective of the GREBAL project (Recognition of traces left by earthquakes in Pleistocene sediments affected by glacio- isostatic rebound in the Baltic Sea Basin). The investigations focus primarily on Poland, Germany, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Project leader Małgorzata (Gosia) Pisarska-Jamroży has summed up new results from this international research effort.

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.

The following open position might be of interest to the Active tectonics and
Paleoseismology community:

UNAM is seeking a Postdoctoral Research Assistant for a 12 month fixed term appointment working on the exciting UNAM-CONACYT-funded project on “Spatial and Temporal Variations of Upper Plate Deformation across the Guerrero portion of the Mexican Subduction Zone” at the Institute of Geography and the Tsunami and Paleoseismology Laboratory, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City Campus. The candidate will pursue fundamental and applied research into the assessment of both temporal and spatial vertical crustal deformation associated with both slow (interseismic) and rapid (coseismic) crustal deformation across the inner forearc region of the central Mexican subduction zone on the Guerrero sector, where the Cocos plate underthrusts the North American plate. The candidate will be responsible for the development and execution of laboratory and field research, conduct studies to develop a model of long-term deformation, coseismic deformation and earthquake/tsunami chronology, writing reports and papers.