An interesting summer school will be held near Cologne, Germany, from 21-27 August 2016. The GSGS Summer School on Dates and Rates of Change in the Quaternary is devoted to teach all different kinds of Quaternary dating methods such as Ar/Ar, cosmogenic nuclides, luminescence, palaeolimnology, palaeomagnetism, radiocarbon and tephrochronology. It is designed for PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and advanced master’s students in geosciences and will be held in English. Deadline for application is 10 June. The workshop is free for all accepted participants. The summer school is funded through the Institutional Strategy of the University of Cologne and supported by the Geoverbund ABC/J. That’s a great opportunity, make sure to apply before it’s too late!

Thanks to Silke for spreading the news.

Dear friends and colleagues,

The 7th PATA Days will start in a few days and the scientific program is out now: Program PATA Days (1.5 MB, PDF). Jim McCalpin just told us that the weather is still somewhat challenging so bring your warm jumper and your waterproofs for the field trips. See you all very soon in Colorado!

The 2nd field meeting of the Argentinian Association for Quaternary and Geomorphology (Reunión de CAMPO de la Asociacion Argentina de Cuaternario y Geomorfología) will be held from 6-8 October, 2016, in San Juan. The conference covers all aspects of Quaternary and geomorphological research, including neotectonics, paleoseismology, natural hazards, and tectonic geomorphology. Check the Facebook page for more information or download the 3rd circular here (pdf). The registration form is available here (doc). All inquiries should be directed to reuniongeomorfologiasanjuan@gmail.com.

Today’s paper round-up covers a very wide spectrum of earthquake related studies. We have work on tsunamis, turbidites, and lake paleoseismology, paleoseismological data from Asia, Archaeoseismology, mud volcanoes, the ESI-2007 scale, and an explanation on what the rise of the Andes is driven by. Enjoy reading!

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I have released mapalomalia, (which may or might not mean model of the Earth), the first fully web based geological modeling platform. I hope it can serve the community of geologists to build models that can help us understand our planet and face the ever-increasing challenges that humanity faces.

I’m Ricardo Serrano, you can reach me @rserrano0 on Twitter or via rserrano@mapalomalia.com. This is the first time I announce this in a well-recognized Blog and I thank Christoph Gruetzner for the opportunity. But let’s move forward to what you were waiting for. What can I do today with mapalomalia? more

On 16 April an earthquake of magnitude Mw7.0 hit the district of Kumamoto, Kyushu Island, Japan. The quake was preceeded by a Mw6.1 foreshock one day before. It occurred on the ENE striking, right lateral Futagawa-Hinagu fault zone. Our colleague Koji Okumura from Hiroshima University has prepared a short report on this surface-rupturing event. Download the report here (PDF, 612 kb). The report will be continuously revised and corrected, so check for regular updates. Thanks Koji for providing this summary!

The IGCP project 639 deals with sea-level changes, coastal earthquakes, and inundation by storms and tsunami: “Sea-level changes: From minutes to millenia”. The first meeting in Oman will take place from 9-14 November 2016 and will cover all science under the IGCP project 639 banner. Make sure to put this on your agenda if you’re interested.

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This is the April edition of my paper round-up. Today I recommend papers on high-resolution topography data, fault mechanics, earthquake environmental/archaeological effects (liquefaction, rotated objects, landslides), Quaternary dating, a fault database for Asia, and tectonics of New Zealand and Martinique. Enjoy! more

Richard Styron has published several interesting tools for fault/stress analysis and other geoscience problems, see his website here: http://rocksandwater.net/. The latest Python tool he is sharing with us is for calculating fault slip rates from offset topography data – great stuff for paleoseismologists! He announced this a few days ago and allowed me to spread the news. Check it out and let him know what you think!

Hi all,

Last year I built a tool to calculate fault slip rates from offset marker data (age and offset distance of features cut by faults).  Although I will be publishing a paper using it eventually, I’d like to spread the word about it now and just get it out to the community.  The Slip Rate Calculator can be found here:  https://github.com/cossatot/slip_rate_calculator, with more documentation.

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From 4-10 September, 2016, the 35th General Assembly of the European Seismological Commission (ESC) will be held in Trieste, Italy. Deadline for abstract submission is 30 April, early bird registration ends 31 May. The meeting covers a whole range of interesting topics, such as Earthquakes in regions of slow lithospheric deformation, active faulting and geodynamic data, secondary earthquake effects, regional studies and many more. Two sessions are probably especially interesting for the paleoseismology community:

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