A special issue on sub-aquatic paleoseismology has been published in Marine Geology. The volume 384 ‘Subaquatic paleoseismology: records of large Holocene earthquakes in marine and lacustrine sediments‘ collects papers on marine and lacustrine mass movements that can be used to decipher the earthquake history. The contributions span a wide range of different settings, from the famous Cascadia sites to Greece, and are based on presentations from the International Sedimentological Congress in Geneva (August 2014) and the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco (December 2014). more

In a recent post on this forum, Angela Landgraf shared a digest of the long and winding road having led to the publication of Seismicity, Fault Rupture and Earthquake Hazards in Slowly Deforming Regions. Reading this post in the midst of wrapping up the edition of our Minoan Earthquakes volume, I could only sympathize with her concerns and hopes for the future of edited books at a time when impact factors and other author-level metrics all too often dictate academic choices.

Four years and a half (!) after the Out of Rubble Leuven workshop (29-30 November 2012), we are proud to announce the publication of Minoan Earthquakes: Breaking the Myth through Interdisciplinarity at Leuven University Press. Reasons for such delay are manifold but chief among them is our editorial choice of producing a coherent volume that might be used as an up-to-date toolbox for readers interested in the broader field of archaeoseismology – not just Minoan archaeoseismology – and its (necessary) relationship to other, better established, disciplines. This choice is reflected by the structure of the book and breadth of topics covered by its authors, ranging from seismology, paleoseismology, geophysics, architecture, engineering and, of course, Minoan archaeology. Although we will ultimately leave readers to judge how successful we were in this endeavor, we are encouraged by Iain Stewart’s appreciation of the volume: more

Today’s paper list is rather long; presumably all the papers written during the winter are coming to publication now. We have lots of different topics today, so I will skip the summary and just say: Enjoy reading! more

Tidal notches are a generally excepted sea-level marker. Particularly in the Mediterranean, those shoreline indicators are oftentimes used to infer coastal coseismic activity when they occur displaced from present day sea-level. Now, paleoseismologists should be able to visualize coastal evolution in order to better understand coseismic history. more

The registration for the 2017 PATA Days INQUA meeting (International meeting on Paleoseismology, Archaeoseismology & Active Tectonics) in New Zealand is now open. Safe the dates 13th – 16th November 2017 and make sure to check out the wonderful field trip options.

Registration website: https://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/News-and-Events/Events/PATA/Registration

See you all in New Zealand in November!

This very interesting job offer was sent around by our colleague Beverly Goodman-Tchernov:

Past tsunami events have impacted the Israeli coastline, and future tsunamis are anticipated.  Physical evidence exists both in historical written records and sedimentological field deposits. Incorporating physical evidence with computational modeling makes it possible to better understand the magnitude of past events and create realistic predictions for the future. The project is in collaboration with Geological Survey of Israel, Virginia Tech, IOLR, and the University of Haifa. It will use multi-sourced data to produce modeling scenarios for past tsunamis and produce a complex reference set of theoretical scenarios to be used in practical real-time hazard assessments. more

[UPDATE 2017-05-14: The links now lead to the free version of the paper, available until 30 June.]

Together with my colleagues I have published a new paper in which we describe a methodology for mapping the shallow architecture of large sedimentary basins with minimum effort and high resolution. We use two geophysical methods and combine them with point information from shallow drillings to identify different types of alluvial, fluvial, and aeolian sediments in the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia. We then show that our results fit well with a remote sensing approach. Although we did not target active faults in our study, the methodology is well suitable for detecting deformed/offset sediments without surface expression due to high erosion or sedimentation rates. That’s why I feel the study is of interest for the fault-hunting community. more

The organisers of the PATA Days 2017 in New Zealand have provided details on the planned field trips. There will be a 1-day field trip at the start of meeting, and an optional 3-day post-meeting field trip. Some of the field trip details are not yet finalised because we don’t know the state of road access to some areas impacted by the Kaikoura earthquake. They will post a final itinerary in early November. Have a look at the programme and enjoy the magnificient field photos!

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It’s just a few months after the Kaikoura earthquake and now the first papers have been published already. Today’s paper round-up also includes studies on dating tsunami boulders, turbidite paleoseismology, paleoseismology in the Tien Shan, the recent Italy and New Zealand earthquakes, and earthquakes and social media. Enjoy reading! more

The city of Cusco in Perú has been hit by damaging earthquakes several times in its long history. In Inka times a strong earthquake destroyed parts of the city, and the Spanish invaders documented an earthquake that happened in 1650. Three hundred years later, in 1950, an earthquake destroyed large parts of modern Cusco and in 1986 a M6.1 event also led to damages in the city. In order to better understand the active normal faulting in the region, INGEMMET has launched the project Cusco-PATA (Paleoseismology, Archaeoseismology and Active Tectonics – “pata” also means “scarp” in Quechua). The project brings together scientists from Perú, Spain, France, and the UK. The 2017 field campaign started in mid-April with work on the archaeological sites in and around Cusco and paleoseismological trenching of the Pachatusan Fault. more