It’s only one month since my last paper update and yet I have nineteen interesting new studies for you. Today’s round-up includes tsunamis, tectonic geomorphology, environmental earthquake effects and soft sediment deformation, new techniques/technology, and some classic paleoseismology. Enjoy! more

[Update 15 February 2017: Since Sascha is an author here now, the post was attributed to him.]
Greece is one of the main targets of RWTH Aachen’s Neotectonics & Geohazards group. They worked on paleo-tsunamis, active faults on the Peloponnese, in Attica, and on Crete, and on the application of terrestrial LiDAR and shallow geophysics for active tectonics research. In their latest paper, Sascha Schneiderwind et al. developed a methodology to aid paleoseismic trenching studies. They use t-LiDAR and georadar to better and more objectively characterise lithological units. His paper includes nice examples from Crete and from the famous Kaparelli Fault. Here is his guest blog: more

Tsunamis are a very real threat in the Indian Ocean. Most people will immediately think of the 2004 tsunami and the Sumatra subduction zone, but the Arabian Sea has seen strong tsunamis in the past, too. In 1945, a major earthquake at the Makran Subduction Zone caused a large tsunami (Hoffmann et al., 2013a). In 2013, the on-shore Balochistan earthquake caused a submarine slide which in turn triggered a tsunami that reached the coast of Oman (Heidarzadeh & Satake, 2014; Hoffmann et al., 2014a). There is also evidence for paleotsunamis along Oman’s coast (Hoffmann et al., 2013b; Hoffmann et al., 2014b). Now a team of scientists from RWTH Aachen University (Germany) and GUtech (Muscat, Oman) have published a tsunami inundation scenario for Muscat (Schneider et al., 2016). This is lead author Bastian Schneider’s guest blog on this research: more

The 4th International Colloquium on Historical Earthquakes and Macroseismology will be held from 2-3 May, 2016, in Vienna, Austria. Attendance is free of charge and registration is possible until 31 March. The meeting is organised by Christa Hammerl and Wolfgang Lenhardt and will be hosted at the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik. The exciting program is available now for download: 2nd circular (PDF, 500 kb).

Our colleague Guillaume St-Onge sent us the following interesting job offer:

PhD project on natural hazards and paleomagnetism at the Institut des Sciences de la Mer de Rimouski (ISMER) in close collaboration with the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP)

Download the flyer here: download PDF more

I am quite happy that our new paper has finally been published in GJI. We worked on a fault between Aachen and Cologne in Germany and found that there has been a surface rupturing earthquake less than 9000 years ago, and possibly not much older than 2500 years BP. The area is of interest also because in 1755/56 a series of damaging earthquakes hit Düren and its surroundings – these are the strongest historical events in Germany that we know of. The quakes were felt as far away as Berlin, Strasbourg, and London, yet there were no primary ruptures. “Our” quake must have been much stronger… more

Great news reached us from Spain! Our colleague Julián Garcia Mayordomo spread the news that an updated version of the Quaternary Active Faults Database of Iberia (QAFI) is now available online. QAFI has a GoogleMaps-based interface with clickable features providing loads of content on fault geometry, fault mechanism, slip-rate, historical and pre-historical seismicity, geomorphology, compilers, further references and much more. Truly a wonderful tool, congratulations!

QAFI is hosted by IGME and can be found here: http://info.igme.es/qafi/ more

Here’s the February edition of my paper recommendations. This time we have:

• Paleoseismology in Germany and Nepal (the latter with a focus on charcoal dating techniques),
• Tsunamis in Greece, Portugal, Israel and Alaska,
• Turbidites in Portugal,
• New insights into the geodynamics of Mozambique,
• Fault rheology in Iran,
• Rupture jumps on strike‐slip faults, and
• A MATLAB tool for seismic hazard calculations.

Enjoy!

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Our colleagues Stéphane Baize and Oona Scotti from the French IRSN finished a report on the 2014 Napa Earthquake: Post-seismic survey report, with special focus on surface faulting. On 24 August 2014, an earthquake of magnitude Mw6 occurred on the West Napa Fault in shallow depth. The quake caused significant damage, an interesting pattern of surface ruptures, and the immediate attention of hundreds of geologists. The primary and secondary effects were mapped only hours after the event, which turned out to be extremely important – a large amount of afterslip was recorded in the following days. The earthquake was not only recorded by a huge seismometer network, but the ground motion was also captured by GPS sensors and InSAR images. The new IRSN report is especially concerned with the surface faulting hazard, since this agency is responsible for the safety of nuclear installations in France.  more

From 20-22 June, 2016, the IASPEI – Regional Assembly of the Latin-American and Caribbean Seismological Commission – LACSC will  be held in San Jose, Costa Rica. There will be some very interesting sessions on active tectonics, paleoseismology, seismic hazard, and intraplate faults: more