This week’s list of papers has some interesting work on soft-sediment deformation and quite a number of studies from the Mediterranean region. But you’ll also find something interesting if you’re more into earthquakes in the Americas, South Korea and Central and Eastern Asia. Enjoy reading!

The workshop Land-to-Sea Shaking Studies – Unlocking the full potential of subaqueous paleoseismology at active plate boundaries will be held from 21-24 October, 2025, at National Taiwan University, Taipei. This event is part of the Magellan Plus workshop series and will include keynote talks, orals and posters, breakout discussions, a session on proposal writing, and a field excursion. Check out the website here. You can already register your interest in attending via the online form.

Dear Colleagues,

We are aiming to organize a special issue titled: Intraplate Tectonics: Earthquakes, active tectonics, and seismic hazard in regions of slow lithospheric deformation.  This special issue will complement a number of recent conference sessions on Intraplate Tectonics and Seismicity that have been held at EGU, IGC, INQUA and other societies over the past number of years.  The solicitation for contributions to the special issue is below.  If you or your colleagues are interested in submitting an article to the special issue, please let us know a tentative title and your list of authors with affiliations by the end of April; send it directly to k.reicherter@nug.rwth-aachen.de. Anticipated deadline for submission of manuscripts 31.12.2025.

Sincerely,

The special issue guest editors: Klaus Reicherter, Beau Whitney, Tamarah King, Sambit Naik

It took a while, but now it’s finally here: Understanding Past Earthquakes, an open access book on the science of identifying large earthquakes. It deals with fundamental questions on large past events: Where did earthquakes occur? How large were they? Which tectonic faults caused them? How strong were the ground motions and where?
Six chapters cover the following subjects:

• Ou et al. – Earthquake Source Parameters Determination Using Analog Seismic Records
• Hough – Macroseismology
• Sintubin – Archaeoseismology: Identifying Earthquake Effects in Ancient Sites
• Zielke & Klinger – Past Earthquakes in Continental Settings—A Geomorphologic Perspective
• Philibosian – Paleoseismology and Paleogeodesy Using Coral Microatolls
• Moernaut et al. – Lacustrine Records of Past Seismic Shaking

Basically, it’s about paleoseismology, but excluding paleoseismology, because we already have McCalpin’s book. Neighbouring topics such as coseismic landslides, the ESI2007 scale, soft-sediment deformation, tsunamis, and marine turbidites have already been covered by other books or recent reviews.

The book was edited by Austin Elliott and Christoph Grützner. It’s free as a PDF or e-book, but also available as a hardcover for your bookshelf. Check it out here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-73580-6.

This is a guest post by Szymon Świątek

New research challenges the assumption that only strong earthquakes cause liquefaction. Scientists from Poland demonstrated that even low-magnitude shocks (~M3.5) can trigger sediment deformation in water-saturated fine-grained sediments. This finding expands our understanding of seismic activity and its effects on geological structures.

This is a guest post by Szymon Świątek

Can we “read” earthquake history by analyzing microscopic quartz grains? New research suggests we can! Scientists from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and the University of Potsdam have introduced an innovative method for studying seismic liquefaction. Their findings, published in the Journal of Structural Geology, reveal that quartz microstructures can help identify past earthquakes.

Jim McCalpin will give a talk on paleoseismology, its history, and its applications in the framework of the GeoLearn Hub and the Geohazards Communities online: Sunday, 16 February, 13:00 GMT.

The 2025 Hokudan meeting on active faulting was held online this year from 23-25 January. It was organised by our friend Koji Okumura. The abstract volume is now available for download here: https://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/kojiok/hokudan2025.html. Check it out, there’s some truly cool stuff, for example a trench with a 1700 year-old human skull in it…

These are the latest papers, this time with a lot of studies from the Americas. Enjoy reading!

This is a guest post by Erin McEwan.

River systems are shaped by both gradual and sudden geological processes, and the influence of active tectonics on river behaviour is a fundamental concept in tectonic and fluvial geomorphology. Despite this, much is still unknown about how earthquake surface deformation can alter flood hazard. This is concerning as human populations are increasingly expanding onto floodplains in seismically active regions. A recent review by McEwan et al (2025) in Earth-Science Reviews addresses this knowledge gap by analysing data from 52 sites where fault deformation is known to have induced an immediate change in river behavior; otherwise referred to as a Coseismic River Response (CRR).