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

The most exciting news this week surely were the media reports that a tsunami destroyed ancient Olympia in Greece, hundreds of years ago. Andreas Vött from Mainz University published a press release at the end of June about his research. Unfortunately, I have only found media coverage in German. The results will be presented at the Corinth2011 conference (registration still open)! more

The preliminary report on the Lorca Mw5.1 earthquake from 11 May 2011 is now also available in English! The quake caused a lot of damages to building despite the relatively low magnitude. One building collapsed and nine people died. The report summarized the geological background, environmental earthquake effects and damaged infrastructure. more

This day’s Centerfault is one of the longest and best investigated faults in Spain, the sinistral Carboneras Fault Zone (CFZ) in Andalusia (36.85°N, 2.25°W). In the north, the CFZ is bounded by the Palomares fault, its southern tip reaches the Gulf of Almería. The NE-SW striking fault zone stretches over 50 km onshore and additional 100 km offshore (Gràcia et al., 2006) and is, therefore, capable of earthquakes with magnitudes > 7. It is one of the three major strike-slip faults in the Betics (Bell et al., 1997). more