The following interesting PhD position is currently available at Northumbria University:

A competitive fully-funded PhD project is currently being advertised on Holocene palaeoseismicity and sea-level change in Chile at Northumbria University, UK in the Department of Geography. The studentship funding includes a three-year stipend and funding is available to UK and international students. Application deadline is 20 January 2017 (PhD start date is 2 October 2017). Full details and online application form can be found via: https://www.findaphd.com/search/ProjectDetails.aspx?PJID=81587&LID=2712. more

If you are interested in visiting the epicentral areas of the recent earthquakes in the Central Apennines, Italy, this is your chance: A four days field trip will be held from 19-22 July, 2017, led by researchers who have studied the earthquake effects in detail. The trip focusses on the fault system that ruptured during the 1997 Umbria Marche, 2009 L’Aquila, and 2016 Norcia events. The trip is organised by scientists from Italy, France, UK, and Greece, and supported by a number of universities, state agencies, and INQUA, with the Università di Camerino as the main coordinator.

More information will be published soon. more

I wish you a successful and wonderful new year 2017! May you find impressive faults and good outcrops, may your trenches always be in the right place, and may your samples return good results. If 2017 brings you something that would be of interest to the paleoseismicity.org community, please let us know. In the mean time, enjoy those reads: more

Richard Styron has released a new, improved version of his Global CMT viewer webmap. The earthquake data are from globalcmt.org, updated every four hours, and colour-coded by depth (purple to yellow = shallow to deep). The tool also displays a number of major faults from the ATA and HimaTibetMap databases. This webmap is a fast and easy way to find interesting earthquakes and to explore global seismicity. Plus, it’s a beautiful map. Thanks Richard for that great application!

The Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics (IAG) of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences invites colleagues, geoscientists, researchers, and international experts from around the world to attend the “The International Conference on Astronomy & Geophysics in Mongolia, 2017” and we hope that you enjoy the scientific program and field-excursion, as well as the hospitality in capital Ulaanbaatar and field-excursions!
The conference will have two sections. The main section will be held in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, between 20 and 22 July of 2017 including the celebration of 60th anniversary of IAG, plenary session, oral and poster sessions. The field section “Field-excursion to Mogod co-seismic fault rupture area” (1967/01/05, Mw=7.1) will be held at Mogod soum of Bulgan province, Mongolia between 23 and 26 July, 2017.

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The Tectonic Studies Group (TSG) will organise a field trip to Death Valley in April 2017. The trip will be of particular interest for those who wish to learn more about tectono-volcanic processes, tectono-sedimentary processes, and the Basin and Range/ San Andreas system.

The trip is being organised and delivered by Phil Benson & Derek Rust of the University of Portsmouth. more

The SSA meeting in Denver (April 2017) will be full of interesting sessions on paleoseismology and earthquake geology, among them:

• The Future of Past Earthquakes, Session Chairs: David Schwartz, Ramon Arrowsmith, William Lettis, Koji Okumura, Daniela Pantosti, Thomas Rockwell
• Earthquake Geology and Paleoseismic Studies of the Intermountain West: New Methods and Findings on Seismic Hazard Characterization of Low Slip Rate Faults, Session Chairs: Seth Dee, Stephen Angster
• Earthquake Impacts on the Natural and Built Environment, Session Chairs: Eric Thompson, Kate Allstadt, Kishor Jaiswal, Nilesh Shome
• Estimating Earthquake Hazard from Geodetic Data, Session Chairs: Jeff Freymueller, Elieen Evans, Jessica Murray
• Fault Mechanics and Rupture Characteristics from Surface Deformation, Session Chairs: Lia Lajoie, Kendra Johnson, Edwin Nissen
• Intraplate Earthquakes: Central and Eastern North America and Worldwide, Session Chairs: Lillian Soto-Cordero, Christine Powell, Will Levandowski
• The Mw7.8 Kaikoura Earthquake, Session Chairs: Bill Fry, Matt Gerstenberger
• Paleoseismology of Subduction Earthquake Cycles, Session Chairs: Rob Witter, Ian Shennan
• Scaling and Empirical Relationships of Moderate to Large Earthquakes: Re-scaling or Re-thinking?, Session Chairs: Laura Peruzza, P. Martin Mai, Lucilla Benedetti
• Toppled and Rotated Objects in Recent, Historic, and Prehistoric Earthquakes, Session Chairs: Klaus-G. Hinzen, Rasool Anooshehpoor
• Varied Modes of Fault Slip and their Interactions – Slow Earthquakes, Creep to Mega Quakes, Session Chair: Abhijit Ghosh

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A continuous flow of images from the New Zealand earthquake reaches the earthquake geology community, and we’re probably all amazed by the coseismic offsets and other earthquake effects. However, the flow of papers on paleoseismology, tsunami, and active tectonics also does not stop and here is my digest for December. Enjoy reading!

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A special session on Toppled and Rotated Objects in Recent, Historic, and Prehistoric Earthquakes will be held during the upcoming 2017 Annual Meeting of the Seismological Society of America in Denver, Colorado from 18-20 April 2017.  Session Chairs will be Klaus-G. Hinzen and Rasool Anooshehpoor.

The main purpose of the session is to bring together researchers with diverse backgrounds (e.g., seismology, engineering, history, heritage conservation) who are interested in the behavior of objects, monuments, or simple structures during earthquakes and the stories which deformed, rotated or toppled objects can tell. The session will cover all aspects of toppled or rotated objects or simple structures which have suffered heavy deformation or damage during earthquakes. Topics will include: (1) observations, (2) documentation, (3) model building, (4) restoration, (5) mapping, and (6) correlation with geology.

Recent earthquake research has postulated correlation between the reaction of objects (monuments, columns, tombstones, etc.) and the seismic source in addition to local effects due to geological site conditions. As the laws of physics are time invariant, knowledge gained in reconnaissance surveys from well-studied instrumental earthquakes can reveal information about ground motions during historical and prehistorical earthquakes. Particular interest will be directed to man-made structures; however, due to similarities of the techniques used to study precariously balanced rocks and speleothems, contributions from these fields are also welcome.

The deadline for all proposed presentations, invited or otherwise, is 5 pm PST January 11, 2016.  All abstracts must be submitted by the deadline. Submitting abstracts through the online submission system only (There is a submission fee of $80 for regular attendees, $40 for students).

There are lots of other interesting sessions on earthquake geology, paleoseismology and related topics at the SSA meeting, make sure to check the full programme: http://meetings.seismosoc.org/special-sessions/

The Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences – Geological Survey of Belgium, invites applicants for a research fellowship (postdoctoral level) in coastal paleoseismology/Quaternary environmental change. It will be a 1.5 year contract (January/February 2017- June 2018). Here’s the job advert: more