The 6th INQUA workshop on Active Tectonics, Paleoseismology and Archaeoseismology will be held from 19-24 April, 2015, in Pescina, Fucino Basin, Italy.

We will remember the centenary of the 1915 M7 Fucino earthquake, that was one of the largest and most devastating earthquakes ever occurred in Central Italy.

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Springer has recently published the book Dynamic Tectonics and Karst in the series Cave and Karst Systems of the World, edited by our colleagues S. Shanov and K. Kostov. The book focusses on the influence of tectonic processes on the formation of karst and karst caves and one chapter is devoted to karst cave paleoseismology. The authors present studies from the Balkans, Cuba, and France.  more

Second meeting on Active Faults and Paleoseismology in two weeks, so I am on the road again. Today, the 2nd Iberfault meeting in Lorca/Murcia/Spain starts focussing on A multidisciplinary approach to the study of active faults, earthquakes and seismic risk. After the very successful first meeting in Sigüenza/Guadalajara/Spain in 2010 after four years now the city of Lorca is the host. The reason is simple: a magnitude 5.1 earthquake struck the area, leaving the region with the relative high number of 9 casualties, 100 Mio. € damage and a series of scientific papers that e.g. this earthquake was anthropogenically induced by water expulsion (it was discussed here a couple of months ago by Christoph). more

“Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” 

I was thinking of this quote whilst listening to Mustapha Meghraoui’s talk during this week’s ISEMG conference in Mugla (Turkey). Mustapha was reviewing the seismic hazard potential of the northern stretch of the Dead Sea Rift, and he ended by identifying two prominent areas where there was a substantial long-term (1000 yr) slip deficit that strongly suggested heightened future earthquake potential. The quote above has nothing to do with earthquakes. Neither is it by Mustapha. Instead, it relates to global warming and was from the climate modeller and policy advocate Stephen Schneider. Nevertheless, it struck me that what Schneider was wrestling with a decade or so ago with climate change has parallels to what some earthquake geologists are wrestling with now: what do we do when we believe that the science demands action? more

In this week the 8th International Symposium on Eastern Mediterranean Geology started in Mugla/Turkey, our colleague Ersen Aksoy is one of the major organizers together with his colleagues and teams from the Mulga University, many sessions with interesting talks are scheduled, the programme lists many interesting talks on paleoseismology of the Aegean area and Turkey, and the Levant area. Yesterday, the meeting strated with keynotes from Celal Sengör (on the eastern Mediterranean tectonic framework and deformation history) and Iain Stewart (on: Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Communicating Geology to Society). Then the individual scientific sessions started with presentations on….

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The 2011 Christchurch earthquake series had severe consequences and surprised scientists for many reasons. Ground motions were extremely strong despite the relative moderate magnitudes of the quakes (M_W 5.3-7.1). The events happened on a system of hitherto unknown faults, some of which are located directly below Christchurch. Earthquake environmental effects (EEE), especially liquefaction, were intense and widespread. It turned out that subsequent quakes reactivated the same feeder dikes of sand blows, showing that saturated sediments are susceptible of liquefaction no matter if they had been liquefied recently (also see the paper of Quigley et al. (2013) on the liquefaction effects). Another stunning lesson was the occurrence of intense rockfall in the vicinity of Christchurch. In a recently published study, Mackey and Quigley (2014) dated rockfall boulders with ³He and show that they allow to estimate the recurrence intervall of local seismic events like the 2011 series. This works is a very interesting way to use EEE for paleo-earthquake studies. more

A couple of new papers on paleoseismology and related fields have recently been published. They deal with active tectonics in China, coseismic uplift in Japan, seismites in Canada, turbidite and lake sediment paleoseismology, earthquake environmental effects in Greece, paleotsunami deposits in India, an earthquake and tsunami in 1531 in Lisbon, tsunamites in Malta, tectonic geomorphology, scaling relationships in the Med,  and the 2013 Balochistan earthquake and subsequent tsunami. If you miss recent studies here, drop us a mail. more

The GeoFrankfurt conference took place a few days ago. Due to the large amount of work presented on Eastern Mediterranean Tectonics, a special issue on this topic will be published in the International Journal of Earth Sciences (former Geologische Rundschau). Paris Xypolias allowed me to circulate the call for papers: more

The 5th PATA Days have been a great experience. We had lots of interesting science and discussions, great field trips, wonderful social events and a quite thoroughly insight into Korean cuisine. It was for sure the best organized PATA Days meeting that took place so far – many thanks and congratulations to Prof. Young-Seog Kim, Dr. Jin-Hyuck Choi and the fantastic Korean organizing team.

If you want to download the abstract volume and the field trips guide, here are the free download links: more

The second day of the meeting revealed very nice and interesting talks of the Korean geologists and paleoseismologists, which was an excellent preparation for the upcoming post-meeting field trips on the following days. Talker of the day was Dr Tom Rockwell, he gave three talks and lectures, however one as replacement for Bill Lettis, who wasn´t able to come to Korea. Before dinner a traditional Korean drum and percussion show opened our ears and eyes for this beautiful and sometimes mysterious country. This closing dinner outside Busan was very special, in a kind of museum with a terracotta choir of a million voices, and…. more