Structure-from-Motion is now a standard technique for documenting outcrops and paleoseismic trenches. It is also widely used in archaeology, architecture, disaster response, etc. In a perfect world, we would always have lots of well-known ground control points (GCPs) for our 3D models, for example by using a differential GPS. However, quite often we can’t do that because we don’t have a dGPS, because we stumbled upon an outcrop by accident, because we don’t want to carry the tripod to the top of a summit, etc. The problem is that without GCPs we might end up with funny errors in our model. Ian Pierce has written a tutorial about how to overcome many of these problems by combining SfM with the scans of the iPad’s and iPhone’s built-in lidar sensor: https://neotectonic.github.io/posts/iOS_Surveying/
It’s early November – time for the latest paper roundup. This time there are many earthquake studies from China and California. New Zealand and Australia got some good coverage, too, but there’s also news from Central Europe. Plus, burglargrams! Enjoy reading.
Within the Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan (NPRR/PNRR), the University “Federico II” of Naples offers 1 PhD position with the title “Earthquakes and Volcanoes”. The project will be focused on the study of active faults and seismic hazard. The study area will be mostly located in Southern Apennines. The deadline for application is the 3rd November 2022. More information can be found at the website: http://www.unina.it/en_GB/didattica/post-laurea/dottorati-di-ricerca/bandi-di-ammissione
Finally, after Posidi, Greece, 2018, we had a successful PATA Days meeting! The meeting in 2019 was cancelled due to organisational problems and we held a student summer school instead in Prague. All plans were set for Chile in 2020, but it had to be cancelled twice because of Covid-19. Now it finally happened! The organisers Magali Rizza and Stéphane Baize and their wonderful team took us to Aix-en-Provence…
Make sure to scroll down to learn about the future of PATA!
I am on my way back from the PATA Days in France, which were great. A detailed report will follow later. In the meantime, enjoy reading the latest papers – we have a nice variety of topics and working areas.
The PATA Days in France are just a few days away. Get in the right mood by checking out the programme or by reading the (short) abstracts. The field trip guide for the post-conference excursion is also available for download here. The official website has all the important news concerning logistics etc.: https://patadays-2022.sciencesconf.org/
The Aix-en-Provence PATA Days are fast approaching and the meeting programme looks super-exciting! Unfortunately, I’ll not attend the congress, but my soul will be there in poster form – presenting author is 1st year PhD student Marco Pizza and the topic is the likelihood of primary surface faulting.
Some earthquakes produce surface faulting, others do not. Several factors affect the outcome of this dichotomous variable (faulting YES/NO), including magnitude, depth, earthquake kinematic and local lithology. The probability of having surface rupture for a given magnitude is a key ingredient in Fault Displacement Hazard Assessment (FDHA). This probability is derived from empirical datasets and the state of the art is summarized in Figure 1, taken from the recently published IAEA Tecdoc on probabilistic FDHA.
This is the latest list of papers on paleoseismology and related fields. This time we have a lot of new studies on Eastern and Central Asia – very interesting reads! Enjoy reading and let me know if I have missed something.
Today we have a number of articles on fault physics and some papers that use novel or unconventional ways to address large earthquakes and their proxies. Enjoy reading!
We investigated homogeneous muds, turbidites, and debrites that were preserved in a 457-m deep ICDP drilling (220-0 ka) from the Dead Sea depocenter. Based on previous flash flood measuring, surface plume monitoring, and sediment traps monitoring in the lake center, we link homogeneous muds in the deep core to overflows, and link turbidites and debrites to underflows. The study bridges the gap between our understanding of modern sediment density flow processes and deposits preserved in a long-term geological record in the Dead Sea, a tectonically active subaqueous environment (Dead Sea rift zone).