The gathering of the South American Neotectonic Group took place at the Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago as a departure point of the scheduled activities of the “Inventory of Hazardous Structures of South America” project, a topic layer of the South America Risk Assessment (SARA) effort (see previous post at here). This convocation also hosted a meeting of the INQUA SAm-GeoQuat IFG and the 1311 Project.

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Several recently published studies deal with paleoseismology and related fields, especially tsunamis and archaeoseismology.

Do you feel some important papers are missing? Contact us and tell us! more

A long year ago, the last Friday links were published, a section I always liked and waited for during food coma or processing times. Christoph managed to find intriguing bits and pieces from the digital world of geosciences week after week. And now it’s me (and maybe with a little help from my friends), trying not only to follow-up but also to keep you updated and to keep the geoblogosphere interconnected. What a task! I’m already loving it.
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The EEE Metrics Project & IFG Paleoseismology and Active Tectonics will host two paleoseismology sessions at the XIX INQUA 2015 in Japan. The congress will be held in Nagoya from 27 July – 2 August. Deadline for abstract submission and travel grant application is 20 December, 2014, deadline for early bird registration is 28 February 2015. more

Our latest paper on coastal change in Oman deals with an extreme flood event that was recorded in an archaeological site in Ras al Hadd, at the easternmost tip of the Arabian Peninsula. We found multiple evidence for tsunamis that hit Oman’s coast in the past. Close to Fins, mega-boulders were thrown on a cliff by huge waves. Fine-grained sediments typical for tsunami action were found in the same area. Searching for further evidence, we came across the archaeological site of HD6 in Ras al Hadd. The archaeologists who were excavating this site told us about strange findings in the archaeological record – they encountered a layer that interrupted the otherwise continuous stratigraphy of the settlement. The bronze age fishing village is located very close to the coast only a few meters above sea level, a large tsunami could easily impact here. more

Here’s my list of recent publications that deal with paleoseismology and related topics.

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The 2nd Historical Earthquake Colloquium will be held in Strasbourg, France, from 12-13 May, 2015. It focusses on Major Historical Earthquakes of the Rhine Graben and Intraplate Europe – From archives to comparative seismotectonics.

Following the first edition dedicated to historical earthquakes held in Freiburg (May 19 and 20, 2014), this meeting will focus on seismological studies of the Rhine Graben and intraplate Europe. The meeting will also address the relationships between recent seismicity, non-instrumental earthquakes and their seismotectonic characteristics. Contributions on historical, instrumental seismology and induced seismicity
are welcome. We also encourage presentations in seismotectonics, paleoseismology, archeoseismology and seismic hazard assessment.
We propose three sessions:

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Our colleague Manuel Díaz-Azpiroz from Seville and his colleeagues will be guest editor of a special issue on “Tectonics of Oblique Plate Boundary Settings”, which is going to be published in Tectonophysics.

Everyone who is interested to participate may submit a manuscript. The Special Issue aims on contributions about different aspects of the study of convergent and divergent, ancient and active oblique plate boundary systems, including analytical, numerical and analogue modelling methods, as well as field-based analyses of natural cases. Innovative approaches that exploit new analysis techniques (3D geophysical modelling, space geodesy-based kinematics, etc.) or methods combining structural geology with geophysics, petrology, geomorphology or stratigraphy are also welcomed. Through this thematic volume of Tectonophysics, the progress in the understanding of the kinematics and dynamics of oblique plate boundaries will be addressed and innovative and/or multidisciplinary research methods that provide new insights into the 3D deformation inherently linked to these systems will be promoted.

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Our colleague Franck Audemard spread the news that a special issue of the Journal of South American Earth Sciences (SAMES) will be published on “Regional moment tensors and stress field in South and Central America”. Given the success of the RMTS (Regional Moment-Tensor Solution) session in the IASPEI Regional Assembly in Bogotá, last July, a special issue is now planned on all aspects of moment-tensors and stress field. more

The Deform2015 school on Active Deformation, Faults and Earthquakes from Measurements to Models will be held in Southern France from 7-13 February, 2015.
Over the past years, considerable advances have been made in observing crustal deformation at scales of seconds to thousands of years.
However, a unified view of the earthquake cycle is still missing. The thematic school aims at bringing together students and scientists
working on different aspects of active faulting and earthquake processes. This school will provide a state-of-the-art view of the technics used to study active deformation as well as a perspective on the current models integrating the growing corpus of available data.

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