Let’s start with some good news: The first two Galileo satellites (Natalia and Thijs) will be launched today from Kourou. It’s a little behind the schedule (6 years) and the entire project has become a little more expensive than previously thought (1,600,000,000 €), but who cares? It will provide 1 m GPS resolution! 1 m!!!
There is one more Archaeopteryx! Really! Soemone who does not want his name to be told handed out the fossil to scientists. After a thoroughly investigation of that great piece of Solnhofen Plattenkalk, the anonymous collector will get back his bird. No, his dinosaur I mean. Ehm, his Archaeopteryx.
Dave Petley reported on a giant landslide in Iceland. It’s expected to have ~1,000,000 m³. See the amazing images, just great.
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Dear participants,
hopefully, everybody has returned well and everybody enjoyed the meeting,
we have received a lot of mails and the feedback is fantastic. THANK YOU!
The updated abstract volume will be ready for download soon. You will receive an extra mail with the link or can just visit paleoseismicity.org.
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Based on a new inversion of InSAR data, De Natale et al. predicted that the Avezzano and Sulmona tectonic domains, in Central Italy, may anticipate by 15-20 yr the next large earthquake, as a result of stress transfer. Avezzano and Sulmona were razed by a large earthquake in 1915 and 1706, respectively.
Giuseppe De Natale, Bruno Crippa, Claudia Troise and Folco Pingue. Abruzzo, Italy, Earthquakes of April 2009: Heterogeneous Fault-Slip Models and Stress Transfer from Accurate Inversion of ENVISAT-InSAR Data. Bull. Seism. Soc. Am., 101(5), 2340-2354, 2011. DOI: 10.1785/0120100220.
9:00 The second day started with a great keynote, Chris Scholz talked about earthquake triggering and fault synchronization with examples from California and Iceland.
09:45 Next great keynote: Clark Burchfiel on the Wenchuan EQ!
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After the arrival (thanks to Christoph for the shuttle!) and a very nice opening dinner yesterday the first key note lectures have been held this morning.
Dimitrios Papanikolaou introduced the Hellenic Arc system and talked about plate scale-geometries and active movements.
Poster session 1: Tom Rockwell in front of his poster (Tsang et al.)
Jim McCalpin held a very interesting talk about using Lidar in dense forests in Alaska to detect neotectonic movements which surely would be a great method for Europe, too!
Eldon Gath presented a study dealing with three-dimensional fault rupture interpretation.
Right now it’s time for the first poster session. We’re directly at the beach, it’s almost 30°C, sunny and a smooth breeze chills our science-filled minds.
After the very successful 1st Workshop on Earthquake Archaeology and Paleoseismology held in the ancient roman site of Baelo Claudia (Spain, 2009), the INQUA Focus Group on Paleoseismology and Active Tectonics decided to elaborate a bi-annual calendar to support this joint initiative with the IGCP-567 “Earthquake Archaeology”. This second joint meeting moved to the eastern Mediterranean, a tectonically active setting within the Africa-Eurasia collision zone and located in the origins of the pioneer’s works on archaeoseismology. However, for the coming year 2012, at least a part of us will move also to the New World, where the 3rd INQUA-IGCP 567 international workshop will take place in Morelia, Mexico in November 2012. It is planned to proceed with the meeting, so we are thinking of Aachen, Germany, to be the host in 2013, possibly together with Louvain, Belgium.
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The program of the upcoming 2nd INQUA – IGCP 567 International Workshop on Active Tectonics, Earthquake Geology, Archaeology and Engineering just released! Have a go!
19-24 September 2011 Corinth, Greece
PROGRAM WORKSHOP Corinth 2011
A new paper published in Natural Hazards today discusses post-depositional changes of tsunamites. At sites in Thailand covered by sediments of the 2004 Sumatra tsunami, Szczuciński (2011) has documented significant changes in the deposits over the last seven years. Not only were the tsunamites altered, eroded or re-deposited by animals and seasonal rain, but also vanished in certain cases.
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A new book with focus on paleoseismology has been published by GSA. Special Paper 479 – “Geological Criteria for Evaluating Seismicity Revisited: Forty Years of Paleoseismic Investigations and the Natural Record of Past Earthquakes” is edited by Franck A. Audemard M., Alessandro Maria Michetti and James P. McCalpin. Again, a lot of interesting reading stuff for your flight to Corinth…
Yesterday, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake happened near Mineral, Virginia in a depth of 6 km only (37.936°N, 77.933°W) with a thrust faulting mechanism. Media report that the quake was felt as far as Boston and even Canada to the north, but significantly less far away in southern direction. The US East Coast quakes are normally felt in a wide range, since the crust there is old, cold and dense which makes it easy for the seismic waves to propagate. Some damage occurred at the epicentral area, but apparently there were no fatalities. From the earthquake effects (Chimneys collapsed, walls cracked, some springs showed changes) and instrumental measurements an epicentral intensity of VII can be determined. more
