I’ve spent several weeks in Eastern Kazakhstan this summer for paleoseismological field work. During the first part of this trip we looked at some thrust and strike-slip faults in the Ili Basin and the Saty area. The second part was almost entirely devoted to study the Dzhungarian Fault. I’ll blog about this second part later. Eleanor, David, Austin and me were the UK representatives in our team. We were so lucky to have Kanatbek from Kyrgyzstan and Aydin from Kazakhstan with us. They did not only lead us to all the interesting places and helped us to understand the geology and the tectonics, but they also did a fanatastic job organizing the field trip and dealing with the local surprises, which as you know happen in basically every field trip.

Our first study site was located at the northern boundary of the Ili Basin, where we did some work last year already. more

Several new studies have been published recently on old earthquakes and their geological footprint – time to list them and to recommend reading. Additionally, today’s paper digest also lists several articles which are not about paleoseismology, but geoethics. These papers were published in a special volume of GSL. They cover subjects that many paleoseismologists will have dealt with in the past or are likely to deal with in the future  – seismic risk perception, science communication, public outreach, and communicating uncertainties. One paper is dedicated to the L’Aquila trial. I find it very telling that this issue is not open access. Obviously, strengthening “public trust in geosciences” has still a long way to go…

Here are the latest papers:

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The Canyonlands National Park, Utah, is famous for its beautiful landscape and spectacular landforms. For many geoscientists it is also well-known as a sandstone reservoir analogue and as a tourist you’ll often run into groups of geologists on field trips. It’s a matter of debate how and how fast the beautiful grabens in the Needles Fault zone formed – these are large arcuate canyons several tens of kilometres in length, paralleling the Colorado River. In a new paper we present results from remote sensing, mapping, and georadar (GPR). Our aim was to better understand the coupling between deformation, erosion and deposition in such an active system. Based on our findings we developed a model of graben formation and describe the geometry of the dilatant faults at depth. We argue that either the grabens are older than previously assumed or that sedimentation rates were much higher in the Pleistocene.

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The following very interesting mail reached us by Abdelkrim Aoudia from the ICTP in Trieste (Italy):

Three Postdoctoral positions in paleoseismology and seismology

are available at the Earth System Physics (ESP) section of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP).  The two first positions (A and B) are funded by the GENERALI Group– a major player in the global insurance industry, in the framework of a research project integrating earthquake fault studies and simulations of the ground-motion.

The third position (C) is funded in the framework of an international collaborative effort following the recent Nepal Gorkha 2015 earthquake. The research topic involves a study of the structure, dynamics and seismicity of Nepal Himalaya.

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Greece is a Disneyland for neotectonics and active faulting research. Some of the most important findings in earthquake science have been achieved in Greece, its historical catalogue is one of the longest on Earth, and paleoseismology, archaeoseismology & tsunami studies are abundant. These are many good reasons to consider registration for the 14th Int’l Conference of the Geological Society of Greece (Thessaloniki, May 25-27, 2016), especially since the programme is full of earthquake science stuff. The deadline for submitting papers is September 30.

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Summer time is publishing time! Lots of new papers are out, today we have

• archaeoseismology & rotated objects;
• paleoseismology in Korea, China, & Portugal;
• trench photomosaicking and PBRs;
• lots of tectonic geomorphology (i.e., Ximena’s paper on the Carboneras fault where I did my diploma thesis in 2004…);
• news from the Balochistan earthquake; and
• tsunamis.

Enjoy reading and tell us if something is missing!

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Trenches are open all over the world, news on the next TSG meeting (in London), a landslide database visualisation, and more. Today is Friday and here are your links!

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Mediterranean tsunamis, puzzled scientists a year after the South Napa EQ, a new structural geology lab manual, success of brevity and the search of (right) answers. Today is Friday and here are your links!

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At the XIX INQUA congress in Japan I had the chance to see the surface ruptures of the 1891 Nobi earthquake during the mid-congress excursion M-2. This quake caused huge damage, but more interestingly for me, it produced amazing surface ruptures which are preserved even more than a hundred years after the event. The M7.5-M8 quake occurred in a mountainous area and was mainly strike-slip (more than 8 m!), but significant vertical uplift was found at step-overs. In 1991, the wonderful Neodani Fault Museum opened to the public, its main attraction being a paleoseismological trench exhibiting more than 5 m of vertical offset! Simply astonishing. Thanks to Atsumasa Okada, Heitaro Kaneda and Keitaro for this great excursion! more

Here is my latest update on paleoseismology-related literature. Plenty of new hot stuff has been published, today we have: archaeoseismology & liquefaction in Corinth, incredibly good data from the Gorkha earthqukae (Nepal), an earthquake that deviated the Po River, paleotsunamis in Israel and Taiwan, notes about tsunami boulders, and tsunamis in Greece. Enjoy!

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