Dear friends and colleagues,

The 7th International Workshop on Paleoseismology, Active Tectonics, and Archaeoseismology (PATA Days) will be held in the USA from 30 May – 03 June, 2016. The workshop is sponsored by the INQUA-TERPRO Commission and mainly organized by James McCalpin. The workshop includes several excursions and we welcome presentations on a broad list of topics related to seismic hazards and active tectonics: more

A few weeks ago, Nadine Reitman (USGS) published an interesting paper about the use of Photogrammetry for Paleoseismic Trenching in BSSA. In this guest blog she shares her key findings and explains how to minimise errors without spending too much time measuring control points. Thanks Nadine!

Structure-from-motion (SfM) is now routinely used to construct orthophotos and high-resolution, 3D topographic models of geologic field sites. Here, we turn SfM on its side and use it to construct photomosaics and 3D models of paleoseismic trench exposures. Our results include a workflow for the semi-automated creation of seamless, high resolution photomosaics designed for rapid implementation in a field setting and a new error analysis of SfM models. more

Just a friendly reminder that the deadline for abstract submission for the EGU general assembly 2016 in Vienna is tomorrow, January 13th at 13:00 CET/12:00 GMT. If you are still looking for a session to submit your abstract to, please have a look at our session about Active Faults and the Earthquake Cycle (TS4.2/NH4.16/SM3.8)

By the way, the Vienna Basin is the perfect place to discuss active faults, as you see on our newest gravel pit outcrop. If you interested in having a closer look at this fault during the EGU – let me know…

Hopefully see you soon in Vienna,

Esther, Kris, Matthieu, Angela

more

This is this year’s last issue of my paper round-up, and it includes some pretty interesting stuff. Our Greek colleagues published a report on the liquefaction caused by the 2014 Lefkada earthquakes, just in time with the recent earthquake that hit more or less the same area again (Papathanassiou et al., and see earlier posts here). Long et al. published a paper on iceberg-induced tsunamis, found in the sedimentary record – that’s a great story, isn’t it? Jacobson’s PhD on the Lake Heron Fault (NZ) is an interesting read, and Iván Sunyol’s paper on paleoseismological trenches in Mexico is especially interesting for those who attended the 2012 Morelia meeting. Zhou et al. come up with a great dataset of Pléiades imagery from the El Mayor-Cucapah Quake, Calais et al. have a close look on the northeastern Caribbean, and finally, Kufner et al.’s paper is about the collision between India and Asia deep below the Pamir and Hindu Kush.

Enjoy reading and Merry Christmas!

more

The EGU General Assembly 2016 will be held in Vienna from 17-22 April, and the abstract deadline on 13 January 2016 is coming closer and closer. So if you haven’t already submitted your paper, keep this deadline in mind! Here are some warmly recommended sessions related to paleoseismology:

1) NH5.7/GM12.6/SSP3.20 Geological records of extreme wave events (co-organized). Conveners: Ed Garrett, Jessica Pilarczyk, Max Engel, Dominik Brill, Simon Matthias May

Even though I haven’t posted on this blog for years (sorry, Christoph…), I greatly appreciate the opportunity to advertise our session gathering all types of geological investigations, including both field studies and modelling approaches, which foster our understanding on tsunamis and high-magnitude storm surges. We welcome contributions on (i) sedimentary and geomorphological evidence of high-energy wave events from low and high energy environments, from low and high latitude regions and from coastal and offshore areas, (ii) novel dating approaches, (iii) numerical and experimental modelling studies of high-energy coastal sediment transport, and (iv) probabilistic tsunami hazard assessment based on geological data. more

I am running this blog for more than five years now and it is time to acknowledge the other geo-blogs out there that have inspired me. In order to stay updated I follow the Geobulletin, which monitors the geoblogosphere activity. There are numerous amazing blogs out there that are either fun to read or interesting or both, but here I will focus on the ones dealing with earthquakes/tectonics/geomorphology/tsunamis. Here is my personal, subjective, but honest, list of earthquake blogs that I like and read: more

Marta Ferrater from the Universitat de Barcelona did a lot of research on the Alhama de Murcia Fault. Her most recent paper deals with how good we can measure lateral offsets along faults which move only very slowly. This is probably of great interest for many people working on slow faults, so I am glad that she agreed to write the following guest post: more

Our colleague Efthymios Lekkas kindly uploaded a new report on the recent South Lefkada Earthquake. If you can read Greek, have a look at this website: http://www.edcm.edu.gr/. Alternatively, you can download the slideshow from his personal website here as a PDF: http://www.elekkas.gr/images/stories/Frontpage/2015_Lefkada/lefkada2015.pdf

The PDF contains info on the tectonic setting, historical and instrumental seismicity, followed by a collection of the earthquake (environmental) effects. more

On 17 November, 2015, a M_W6.4 strike-slip earthquake occurred in Lefkada Island, Greece. Lefkada is close to the Cephalonia Transform Fault and has repeatedly experienced strong shaking in the past. The most recent event caused two fatalitites, some damage, and resulted in widespread environmental earthquake effects (EEE). A team of scientists visited the epicentral area after the quake and recorded the damage and the EEEs. They wrote a preliminary report, which can be downloaded here: Lefkada 17 Nov 2015 earthquake report (PDF, 3.9MB).

They document mass movements, damage to buildings, and present first data from seismology, GPS and satellite geodesy.

Thanks to George for sending us the report!

A couple of interesting papers were published since my last round-up, including work on paleoseismology, tsunamis, measuring offsets, and boulder transport by storms. Enjoy reading! more