On Thursday 28^th June, I had the opportunity, together with over 40 students and Early Career Researchers, to attend the full-day summer school organized during the 9^th PATA Days Congress in Possidi, Greece.

Gotha speakers gave short lectures on a variety of topics; well, it’s quite strange realizing that behind a book cover or a long list of papers you’ve read there’s a real person with a face, 2 hands and 2 eyes… but that’s what happened to me.

Location, location, location

As geoscientists, we all know the importance of a proper location… the Possidi Holiday Resort is just 20 m from the beach! Even the storm Hera did not prevent us to go for a swim.

The Possidi Beach. Photo by Sofia Christoforidou.

The summer school

1. The first lecturer was Klaus Reicherter, dealing with tsunamis in the Mediterranean and in Greece and highlighting the inherently multidisciplinary nature of such a research.
2. Tom Rockwell focused on strike-slip fault with worldwide examples – S. Andreas, North Anatolian, Great Sumatra and Dead Sea Faults – and field-based results.
3. Jim McCalpin spoke about the use of paleoseismology in seismic hazard assessment, giving us a bucket of real-life examples, experiences, good (and less good) practices. And I learned that when building a logic tree, a 5% probability is not denied to (almost) everybody.
4. Shmulik Marco showed on- and off-fault archaeoseismological evidences and soft-sediment deformations along the Dead Sea Fault. Plus (in my opinion) the best tip of the day: keep good relations with archaeologists, you never know what they will discover under the dirt.
5. Then, Spyros Pavlides dealt with active faulting in multi-fractured seismic areas, and specifically the Aegean region. Just in case you are wondering if there’s something simple there, ehm… no, you should consider multiple tectonic phases, inherited structures, the presence of normal faulting, subduction zones and volcanic activity all together.
6. We definitely changed perspective with Manuel Sintubin, speaking about earthquake risk communication and the need to move from a risk message model toward a risk dialogue model; this is a super-important topic not always addressed in the proper way, with possible huge consequences.
7. Ioannis Papanikolaou spoke about the seismic landscape, extraction of slip rates and fault specific SHA with tens of examples from Greece and Italy and useful tips on advantages and disadvantages of each methodological approach.
8. Finally, Georgios Syrides gave a lecture on sea level change indicators. Well, I’m very ignorant on this because simply it’s not my bag, so I learned lots of things (bonus: super-cool photos!).

Here’s the PATA team! (yes, I’m quite mad with football and the World Cup was ongoing…)

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that” – John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

I saw top scientists jump on their seats when other top scientists called “small” a M 6 or “moderate” a M > 7 earthquake. Or when a trench revealing 5 events was called a “short record”. We all have different perspectives, opinions and experiences. And with “we” I mean all of us, from top scientists down to undergraduate students. I think it’s a richness and we should take care of it.

Final remarks: thanks!

The success of the summer school and the whole 9^th PATA Days meeting would not have been possible without the contribution and efforts of the Thessaloniki University staff. A big thank to all of you and see you in the next PATA meeting!

Many more photos taken during PATA 2018 are at http://bit.ly/PATA18_photos

Group photo of the summer school participants. Photo by Sofia Christoforidou.

The conference “30 years after the Spitak Earthquake: Experience and Perspectives” will be held in Armenia from 3-7 December, 2018. Abstract deadline is 15 September. The first circular has just been released, download the PDF here. The abstract template in MS Word format is available here.

A lot of interesting papers have been published in the past month, including studies on recent moderate to strong earthquakes, geomorphology, fault physics, and some classic paleoseismology. These are the latest articles on paleoseismology and active tectonics – enjoy! more

Dear friends of earthquake geology and paleoseismology,

Due to recent changes in General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), we need to ask you to sign up again for the TERPRO mailing list online via
https://inqua.org/commissions/terpro/join
INQUA is committed to the standards of the GDPR, which means that explicit consent is required to receive news and updates from TERPRO.
By signing up you will become a member of TERPRO without any obligations, you’ll just receive news about the INQUA commission on Terrestrial Processes.

Please note that this is necessary even if you sent an email to Daniel Krohling earlier. If you have signed up already, everything is fine. We apologise for this inconvenience.

INQUA will very soon begin the process of calling for nominations and the election for all Commission Officers for the 2019-2023 period. In order to participate,
you must have signed up via the website, these are the lists INQUA will use. The future direction of the Commission can only reflect the will of the community
at large if the community is engaged and has signed up.

Thanks for your understanding and all the best,

Christoph, Petra & Ioannis
(on behalf of the IFG EGSHaz: http://www.earthquakegeology.com/index.php)

Our colleague Jessica Pilarczyk will chair an Interdisciplinary Tsunami Science Session at the AGU Fall Meeting:

Dear paleoseismicity.org members,

We invite you to submit an abstract to the session, “Interdisciplinary Tsunami Science” at the Fall 2018 American Geophysical Union Meeting, to be held in Washington DC 10-14 December. The session is a continuation of the interdisciplinary tsunami sessions that have been held the past two fall meetings. We hope that you can contribute with abstracts to this session. The session description is below.

The deadline to submit an abstract is 1 August 2018, 11:59 P.M. EDT/3:59 +1 GMT.

The URL’s for the session and the abstract submission for this session are:

https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm18/prelim.cgi/Session/46945

https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm18/nh/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=46945

Jessica Pilarczyk

Finn Løvholt

Kelly Stroker

Stefano Lorito

 

NH021: Interdisciplinary Tsunami Science

Session ID: 46945

Tsunamis are one of the most devastating natural disasters, with the potential for inflicting huge damage along wide stretches of coastal areas. Recent tsunami events have demonstrated that the tsunami risk has grown tremendously since the last ocean-wide tsunami of 1964, primarily due to the expansion of coastal development and the maritime communities. Tsunami science has become one of the most inter-disciplinary research areas. Social science, applied mathematics, engineering, and geology are as important to tsunami research as traditional seismology and oceanography. This session provides a broad forum for cross-disciplinary studies and invites contributions from all areas of tsunami science including: fundamental and basic research; forecast and warning procedures for current and future events; investigation of geologic records and hindcasting of past events; response, mitigation, and recovery strategies; tsunami observations; socio-economic impacts; and hazard and risk studies from tsunamis generated by earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, meteorological phenomena, and meteorite impacts.

The #PATA18 workshop will be held from 25-27 June and the Summer School will take place on 28 June. Under- and post- graduate students can now attend both these events, with special rates:

• Workshop (25-27 June): 30 Euros (attendance only)
• Summer School (28 June): 30 Euros (attendance plus two meals)
• Workshop + Summer School combo: 50 Euros.

There is also the possibility to stay at the Aristotle University camping ground at a very low price, by bringing your own tent or renting one on site. To register for these events and for more information, please contact Ass. Prof. Alexandros Chatzipetros at ac@geo.auth.gr no later than Jun 15th, 2018. more

These are the latest papers on active tectonics, paleoseismology, and tsunami. Lots of new studies from New Zealand and Greece this time, plus an intense discussion on tsunami in the Mediterranean. Enjoy! more

Surface faulting is commonly observed after moderate to strong (Mw > 6.0) earthquakes. Beside primary faulting along the seismogenic structure, distributed faulting (DF) may occur in the vicinity of the principal faulting (ANSI/ANS-2.30, 2015). DF may impact wide areas and its forecasting is particularly relevant for the design of critical or distributive infrastructures (e.g., nuclear power plants). DF assessment is currently pursued through probabilistic fault displacement hazard assessment (PFDHA): in this approach, the conditional probability of DF occurrence is computed as a function of magnitude and distance from the primary fault. Empirical regressions were obtained for the different tectonic styles, based on a limited number of case histories (e.g., Youngs et al., 2003 for normal faults). more

A new issue of Quaternary Perspectives, the INQUA newsletter edited by Lyudmila Shumilovskikh, is out now. QP 25(1) includes a great report by Neta Wechsler on the 2017 PATA Days in New Zealand, more info about the 2019 PATA Days to be held in Israel, and a report on the Int’l Field Trip “From 1997 to 2016: three destructive earthquakes along the Central Apennine fault system”, 19 – 22 July 2017, Italy. Allan Ashworth informs in his INQUA president’s report about the changes that lie ahead and the upcoming challenges in re-structuring INQUA. Plus, there are interesting news on other potentially earthquake-related groups and projects such as 1701P (Late Quaternary records of coastal inundation due to earth surface deformation, tsunami, and storms), PALSEA2, HOLSEA, and GEODUST. The current issue of Quaternary Perspectives can be downloaded here (PDF, 2.57 MB) and will soon be archived at the new INQUA website (check it out!).

If you are looking for affordable accommodation for PATA Days 2018, you may want to consider staying at the University campground, one of the two venues of the meeting. Please note that the number of houses available is limited, so it is advisable to book as early as possible. Find all information you need here:

https://www.patadays2018.org/news/book-you-accommodation-at-the-university-campground