Recently, scientists from Switzerland came up with the news that fractured bedrock might amplify earthquake shaking. The say they observed an increase by factor 10, which seems huge. I knew amplifying by sediment basins, but this is new to me.
100 years ago on 6 January, Alfred Wegener presented his continental drift theory for the first time. The Blogosphere was full with articles, among them: more
Matthew chose to take us to the Baikal Rift with his WoGE #326. The Olkhon island is almost as large as Madeira and has some fascinating tectonic features, thanks again for pointing me to that great spot, Matthew! Now it’s time for a new challenge. Find the following feature on GoogleEarth, post the location and a brief description of the geology in the comments, and all the fame will be yours. more
After all the Christmas and New Year´s parties, and of course, a lot of custom made food, I gained 5 kilos! However, this is also the time to present your gifts and presents. Have you got something very special? I did. more
Today’s post is about Whiskey. And Whisky. More precisely, about how to cool it adequately as a geoscientist. I received a great Christmas gift from Andreas – ice cubes made up of “Nordic Rocks”. The manufacturer promises a perfect way of cooling drinks by adding one to three pieces of 400 million year old swedish bedrock. No thinning of the drink, no pollution. more
Dear friends, colleagues and followers!
We all have been struggling hard to get our desks clean before the Christmas-New Year period, in fourteen days we will ask ourselves – as every year – why we did that. But after cleaning, this is also the time to thank everybody keeping “paleoseismicity.org” alive and recall our achievements and efforts in getting a community during the last year. A special “thank you” goes to Christoph, who is forming the heart of this page, and we hope that he is continuing the great job.
Stay with us, keep contact!
With my very best wishes to you and your families,
Klaus
This beautiful, isolated rock stands in the Alkyonides Gulf, the northwestern part of the Gulf of Corinth. It has some beautiful notches, which indicate recent uplift. It is situated right on the footwall of an active fault, which was activated during the 1981 earthquake sequence. It is not so easy to use those notches as sea level indicators or for measuring tectonic movements if both effects have to be taken into account. The fault has a huge throw and a beautiful scarp (limestone) with lots of slickensides. One of my favourite places in Greece. Well, the entire Perachora peninsula is worth a visit – an earthquake geologist’s Disney Land!
Delphi is one of the most impressive places I’ve ever seen. The landscape is just breathtaking – the archaeological site is situated on the southern flank of the Parnassus Mountains, dominating the entire valley. You can see the Gulf of Corinth right from the temples, and due to the steep slope you feel like Delphi is built on many floors with the stadium being the roof. The oracle might be related to faults under the temple; some authors speculate that gas vents (ethane?) caused hallucinations of the priest, which were interpreted as the oracle. Another nice thing is that you can see the archaeoseismological damage from strong historical earthquakes everywhere – cracks, rotated and tilted walls, corner break-outs, dropped keystones in arches and so on. more
Today is the 200th anniversary of the first event of the New Madrid Earthquake Series. There’s still an open debate on magnitudes, intensities, causative faults, recurrence intervalls and the implication for seismic hazard. Several websites and blogs have nice posts, among them:
In Evelyn’s one-picture-per-day-to-save-some-time-before-Christmas-series, my contribution today is from the Canyonlands, Utah. It’s a view to the north from Needles Outpost campsite, directly at the boarder of the National Park. The reddish sandstones give a beautiful contrast to the dark-blue sky. The picture was taken during the night, there were always that incredible view and millions of stars. No comparison to light-polluted Germany! The tents, which have been our home for three weeks, were completely messed with the ubiquitous red dust after that three weeks… more
I took this picture in an iron-nickel mine in Albania. Here we see the contact between the underlying ultramafics and the carbonates on top. The fluids circulated in the mafics and the iron-nickel ores are trapped at the lithological boundary. The ore is shiny green and occurs in hundreds of small bands in a small area along the contact only. I love this picture because the contact is so sharp. A fault zone nearby bears very beautiful conglomerates which I always wanted to have for my bathroom…
Pa·le·o·seis·mic·i·ty [ pālē·ə·sīz·mĭs′ĭ·tē ] noun, plural -ties. Ancient earthquake activity.
Paleoseismicity.org is a page dedicated to scientists and everyone else interested in paleoseismology, archeoseismology, neotectonics, earthquake archeology, earthquake engineering and related topics. Different authors irregularly write about recent papers, field work, problems, conferences or just interesting things that they come across. We intend to provide a platform for discussion and scientific exchange. Interested in joining as an author? Please contact us!
paleoseismicity.org is edited by Christoph Grützner and administrated by Martin Schmidt, Koblenz/Germany
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