Today is GeoScience Day (Geotag) at RWTH Aachen University! Organized by the Chair of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology, this event will start at 9:30 am in the Couvenhalle, Aachen. Geoscience-related talks and a poster exhibition will only be some parts of the very interesting program. The Geo summer party will be started after the “Geotag” at 6:00 pm at the parking lot of the Geoscience Institute at Wüllnerstraße. Come and see! Follow the Geotag on Twitter (hashtag #GEOTAG) and Facebook, and visit the official website! more

Most of us who are interested in tectonics and paleoseismology subscribed to the EQ-GEO-NET mailing list. The mailing list is a great tool to share info on our research and to discuss. Now the list has a new address: eq-geo-net-ml@aist.go.jp
If you don’t receive messages anymore or if you want to subscribe, please contact eq-geo-net-admin-ml@aist.go.jp more

The Gulf Stream is ensuring the mild climate in Europe, everyone knows that. But does it really? Read Chris Rowan’s article on climate, Gulf Stream, heat capacity and atmospheric circulations.

Ritz et al. published a paper on the paleoseismicity of the North Tehran Fault, Iran. From trenching studies they claim at least 6 surface-rupturing events during the last 30 ka. Read the paper here at JGR-Solid Earth. Ritz, J.-F., H. Nazari, S. Balescu, M. Lamothe, R. Salamati, A. Ghassemi, A. Shafei, M. Ghorashi, and A. Saidi, 2012: Paleoearthquakes of the past 30,000 years along the North Tehran Fault (Iran), J. Geophys. Res., 117, B06305, doi:10.1029/2012JB009147. more

Are you interested in finding out who’s working on paleoseismology and related topics? We can help! The paleoseismologists name list formerly maintained by the USGS is now hosted here at http://www.paleoseismicity.org/the_directory/. Alan Nelson took care about the data in the past, and we’re glad that we could help since the USGS can not host the list anymore. The list is now based on the old USGS data set and might not be complete. So update your link and check our directory. Just drop us a mail if you want to join the list or if you want your info to be changed. more

One of the best blog articles I recently read deals with the problems scientists face when they are interested in public outreach. Scicurious perfectly summarizes our situation.

The transit of Venus was a spectacular event, unfortunately not visible from Aachen. A really great photo collection is here at The Big Picture (Boston.com). A cold comfort for those who missed it (like me). They always have the best pictures there, by the way. more

Three papers published recently caught my eyes. First, Andrej Gosar investigated the earthquake environmental effects (EEEs) of the 12 April 1998 Mw =5.6 Krn Mountains earthquake, Slovenia. The quake measured VII-VIII on the EMS-98 scale, and Andrej found that the intensities reached the same values on the ESI2007 scale. He reports that the intensity distributions for both scales are comparable, but show some differences due to the sparsely populated epicentral area. The research concentrated on rockfalls for EEE determination. It’s a nice example that also moderate events can be characterized using the ESI2007 scale.

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More than two weeks have gone now after the Mw6.1 earthquake in Northern Italy, and a very strong aftershock has rattled the area again and caused casualties and more buildings to collapse. Several reports are already published on that event and we have lots of data which is waiting to be analyzed. Here’s a summary of data sources: more

The University Insubria (Como, Italy) has published the first report on the earthquake environmental effects that accompanied the Northern Italy “Finale Emilia Earthquake” of 20 May, 2012. On that day, a quake with magnitude Mw6.1 rocked the Po Plain, leaving seven people dead and hundreds of houses damaged. On 29 May, a very strong M5.8 aftershock occurred in the region. more

The EMERGEO working group of the INGV (Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia) in Rome, Italy released a preliminary report on coseismic effects of the Finale Emilia earthquake (Mw 5.9) of May, 20, 2012, which hit several provinces in the Po plain. more

I hope you have reserved some time for reading – here comes plenty of great new material on one of the most interesting tectonic features on earth, the Dead Sea Transform. The Israel Journal of Earth Sciences has published a special issue: The Dead Sea Rift as a natural laboratory for neotectonics and paleoseismology, Volume 58, Number 3 – 4. The papers are an outcome of the 2009 INQUA joint Israel/Jordan fieldtrip with the same name. I was lucky enough to have participated in that field trip. It was for sure one of the best field trips I ever had. more