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

Yesterday and today is the time of the lectures and talks, after the introducing field excursion as Christoph has reported. Yesterday evening we waved goodbye to Christoph with a couple of beers, he already needed to leave for another meeting in Durham, UK, early.  We started yesterday morning with keynotes by John Suppe on folding and fold scarps and Vincent Cronin on his SLAM project (the seismo-lineament analysis method, visit his webpage for more information). more

The 5th PATA Days (5th International INQUA Meeting on Paleoseismology, Active Tectonics and Archeoseismology) have started with a great icebreaker party on Sunday. On Monday we went on a field trip to Korea’s east coast and had a look at uplifted Late Quaternary terraces and some relatively young thrust faults. Plus, we visited a nuclear waste deposit site. Today the first presentations will start at 10 a.m. and the first poster session will be held. Here are some impressions from the first days:

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Here’s another job offer that will be interesting for the active tectonics and paleoseismology community. The University of Tübingen will hire a Full Professor (W3) for Geodynamics. They are looking for someone who is familiar with “geophysical methods applied to crustal dynamics or surface processes (broadly defined), preferably with application to geologic hazards. The research focus should be on the physical analysis of Earth surface, tectonic, or climate processes and can include (but is not limited to): geodesy and active tectonics, earthquake seismology and neotectonics, mechanics of hillslopes, sediment transport and erosion, crustal or paleoclimate numerical modeling, or regional to global climate change. A combination of observational and modeling techniques at the regional scale or larger is desirable.”

Find the job offer here or download the pdf here: EOS_Ausschreibungstext_Geodynamic_v140828 (pdf, 57 KB). more

The M6.0 Napa earthquake came along with some interesting effects. It produced relatively large surface ruptures, but only minor secondary earthquake environmental effects like localized lateral spread, almost no liquefaction and rockfalls, but some hydrological changes. Dozens of geoscientists went out for mapping the earthquake ruptures, supported by InSAR data that precisely show where the ground moved.

Now the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association published a 400-pages report on their findings. The report is available for download here. Make sure to read it, it’s full of data and great photographs of surface ruptures.

Other interesting articles and posts on the Napa quake: more