Working on spatial data is the key feature of being a geoscientist and a lot of this work is done using ArcGIS from ESRI. QGIS was always an alternative especially looking at the costs of a full ESRI license. But when it comes to “making maps” QGIS was always behind ArcGIS in map formatting and export. The map composer was more or less … ugly and not state of the art. more

It’s time to revive the Friday Links tradition, I just realized that it fell asleep in March…

A paper published in Science few hours ago deals with the energy release of one of the strangest mega-quakes that we have ever observed, the M8.3 Okhotsk event of 24 May 2013. The interesting thing is that is occurred in more than 600 km depth! In the same issue of the journal another paper describes attempts to perform analogue experiments of such events in the lab. If you just want to get a rough idea about the studies or have no access to science, I recommend to check out Andrew Alden’s article at kqed science. more

A new paper by Esposito et al. has been published in Springer’s Landslide Science and Practice that will help to better constrain intensities on the ESI scale. Landslides induced by twelve moderate to strong earthquakes events during the last 300 yrs have been analyzed. The authors calculated distance vs. magnitude and distance vs. ESI epicentral intensity relationships, similar to the famous correlations by Keefer (1984). more

The latest issue of the Seismological Research Letters (SRL) has at least three papers dealing with topics interesting for paleoseismologists.

Hinzen et al. studied the rotation of objects (e.g., monuments) during the L’Aquila earthquake of 2009. They scanned the rotated objects with a high-res laser scanner, built discrete-element-models from the data and simulated the shaking necessary to cause the deformation. The results help to better estimate earthquake parameters from earthquake archaeological effects (EAEs).

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The INQUA Early Career Researcher inter-congress meeting will take place from 2 – 6 December, 2013 at Wollongong University, Australia. The meeting will bring together young earth scientists with a research focus on the Quaternary, from grad students to PostDocs. Thematic workshops on scientific writing and Quaternary science will be held and you’ll have the chance to discuss with colleagues fromn all over the world. The application deadline for travel support is 15 September, abstract submission and registration should be made before 1 October. There will be a Special Issue in INQUA’s journal Quaternary International in support of this meeting. This is a unique chance for ECRs, so spread the word and submit articles!  more

From 14-18 October 2013 a field training course will take place in Central Argentina. The course and a workshop are organized by the Sam-GeoQuat Group, the topic is: “From the Pampean Ranges to the North Pampa: Tectonic and climatic forcing on the Late Quaternary landscape evolution of Central Argentina”. Deadline for registration is 30 August, so hurry if you are interested. Download the 1st circular (pdf, <1 MB) here: 1-course-sam-geoquat2013 more

A new paper in Tectonophysics deals with the use of terrestrial LiDAR for identifying the slip vectors on fault planes. Thomas Wiatr, Klaus Reicherter, Ioannis Papanikolaou, Tomás Fernandez-Steeger and Jack Mason collected and processed data from Crete island (Greece), where they scanned the scarp of the Spili Fault. They imaged numerous kinematic (slip direction) indicators like slickensides with this relatively new technique. The t-LiDAR data were then compared to traditional compass measurements in order to get an idea about the derivation betwen old-school measurements and high-tech methods.  more

Quaternary shortening at the Andean orogenic front (31°-33°s), Argentina: Current issues and challenges

 Carlos Costa¹, Emilio Ahumada¹, Benjamin Brooks², Andrew Meigs³, Lewis Owen⁴, Thomas Rockwell⁵, Lindsay Schoenbohm⁶, Carlos Gardini¹, Héctor Cisneros¹, Fabricio Vázquez^{1, 7}

1. Universidad Nacional de San Luis, Argentina. costa@unsl.edu.ar
2. U.S. Geological Survey, USA
3. Oregon State University, USA
4. University of Cincinnati, USA
5. San Diego State University, USA
6. University of Toronto, Canada
7. CONICET

Outstanding exposures, new data, and novel hypotheses developed during the last decade have turned the frontal deformation zone of the Andes between 31°S and 33°S (Fig. 1) into one of the most promising areas worldwide for improving the understanding on mountain building processes and seismic hazards related to thrust tectonics.

Because the Andes are relatively narrow in these latitudes, the geodetic signal in the backarc is dominated by the subduction zone locking process at the Chile trench. Nonetheless the geodetic analysis provides some useful constraints on the location and rates of modern backarc shortening, though not necessarily on the vergence. It is currently understood that backarc shortening occurs at rates of ~4-5mm/yr over a zone that is ~30km wide (across-strike) (Brooks et al., 2003; Kendrick et al., 2006). In the north (31°- 32°10° S) this would imply that the west-vergent, Eastern Precordilleran structures are the most likely to be active, while south of 32°10° S the east-vergent structures in the Southern Precordillera belt are likely to be most active (Fig. 1).

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A course on Paleoseismology and Archeoseismology will be held at the Annual Meeting of the Union Geofisica Mexicana on 2 and 3 November 2013. The course will be coordinated by Víctor Hugo Garduño. Also, we would like to advertise three special sessions on paleoseismology, faults, and active tectonics at the same meeting:

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Following Evelyn’s call for geological/geographical/funny signs in the field, I post some nice ones that I came across during the last years. Check out the Accretionary Wedge #58 for more signs! more