It is our greatest pleasure to announce that a new special issue on paleo- and archaeoseismology has been published. The special issue of Quaternary International mainly consists of contributions from a selection of those presented during the first International Workshop on Earthquake Archaeology and Palaeoseismology held at the ancient Roman City of Baelo Claudia (South Spain) in September 2009. There in Southern Spain, the first joint meeting of the INQUA Focus Area on Palaeoseismology and Active tectonics and the UNESCO-IUGS programme IGCP567 on Earthquake Archaeology took place. This volume is one of the first accounts of an integrated approach in the study of past earthquakes combining recent advances in palaeoseismology and earthquake archaeology.
There’s a lot of great reading stuff or the summer holidays or on the plane to Corinth… more
Matthew’s WoGE #305 showed one of the rare sandstone outcrops in Georgia, the Broxton Rocks. The best hint was in the image source: “USDA Farm Service Agency” led me to search the US, and from the vegetation and the shape of the fields (and the E-W river!) it didn’t take too long to find it. But he was right – finding out about the geology wasn’t that easy.
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Earthquake prediction again: The former president of India, Abdul Kalam, said earthquake prediction will be possible within 10 years. It would be great if he was right, but he isn’t. Why do people continue to say that? There are so many that “predict” earthquakes, and so many people relying on them. What a pity… more
Our new paper on lake Ohrid was published in the ZDGG: Reicherter, K., Hoffmann, N., Lindhorst, K., Krastel, S., Fernandez-Steeger, T.M., Grützner, C., Wiatr, T. 2011. Active basins and neotectonics: morphotectonics of the Lake Ohrid Basin (FYROM and Albania). Z. dt. Ges. Geowiss 162 (2), 217 -234. more
Dear friends, colleagues, and followers,
last week the XVIII INQUA Congress took place in Berne (Switzerland). The session “Paleoseismology, megacities and critical social infrastructures” that was held on Wednesday 27 July 2011 (8.30 – 12.30), and, later the Business Meeting of the INQUA TERPRO Focus Area on Paleoseismicity and Active Tectonics took place. We had a very impressive session with important contributions of our Japanese colleagues, suffering not only earthquake and tsunami damage, but also from critical facilities.
Besides our nice presentations and discussions, it should be announced here that Prof. Alessandro Maria Michetti (Como, Italy) was elected INQUA TERPRO president. Congratulations from paleoseismicity.org. And thank you, Ale, for keeping us running. more
This week’s Friday links are almost entirely earthquake related.
On James’ Empty Blog you can find some scary but interesting videos from the Japan tsunami area.
The 3rd INQUA-IGCP567 international workshop on paleoseismology and archeoseismology will take place in Mexico in November 2012. It’s the 100th anniversary of the Acambay Earthquake.
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The public version of the EEE Catalogue, a global catalogue of environmental effects induced by modern, historical and paleoearthquakes, is available at http://www.eeecatalog.sinanet.apat.it/terremoti/index.php. This public version has been developed on Google Earth and aims at providing basic information at earthquake, locality and site level, including the rupture zones (when available) and the local description of environmental effects, integrated by some imagery (photographs, stratigraphic logs, etc.). more
Dear friends,
we announce here that the 3rd INQUA-IGCP 567 international workshop will take place in Morelia, Mexico in November 2012. After Baelo Claudia 2009 in Spain and Corinth 2011 we move for the first time across plate boundaries into the new world. On 19th November 1912 at 07:18 h took place the Acambay Earthquake (Mexico), close to Mexico DF. This is the main reason to celebrate the workshop in Mexico, the commemoration of 100 years since this historical event. The Opening ceremony of the workshop will be held at the City of Acambay with the support of the local authorities.
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Cyprus explosion caused an M3.0 earthquake: On 11 July, a catastrophe took place in southern Cyprus. 2,000 tons of amunition confiscated from an Iranian ship on its way to Syria exploded. 13 people were killed and the military base and a neighbouring power plant were destroyed. Seismographs have registered the shock as an earthquake with magnitude ML3.0.
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This week’s centerfault is a very prominent one that you will know for sure – the Dead Sea Fault. The sinistral strike-slip fault marks the boundary between the Arabian plate and the Sinai. The entire system is more than 600 km long and has accommodated ~107 km of slip since Miocene. Magnitude 7 is no problem for this structure and the recurrence intervalls are short. more
