The deadline of the International Workshop on Advanced Ground Penetrating Radar (IWAGPR) to be held in Aachen, June 2011 has been extended to 28 February:

“Dear Colleagues,

Due to many requests for extension, we have extended the deadline for submitting an extended abstract (camera ready paper, 4-6 pages) for IWAGPR2011 to February 28, 2011.
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The L’Aquila earthquake from 6 April, 2009 caused more than 308 fatalities and destroyed about 15,000 buildings. A new initiative set up by the British architect Barnaby Gunning aims on creating a 3D model of the destroyed city in its present state with SketchUp for GoogleEarth. The model will be used for “creating a valuable resourcef for masterplanning the reconstruction”, Gunning states on the project’s homepage. more

On Wednesday night the Etna on Sicily showed strombolian activity and glowing lava flows were visible from Catania. Don’t miss the great photos here and the webcam of the INGV and EtnaTrekking. This is the first larger eruption since May 2008 and surely one of the most beautiful ones. News coverage with more great videos here.

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Dear Researchers and Other Interested Parties!

We invite you to submit an abstract to the special session “Archeoseismology: Learning about Ancient Earthquakes from the Archeological Record” of the Seismological Society of America Annual meeting to be held in Memphis, TN, April 13-15th. This is a reminder that the abstract deadline for the 2011 SSA annual meeting is 5 PM PST on 11 January.

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On 4 January, 2011 a partial solar eclipse was visible in Central Europe (up to 80% coverage of the sun).  Werner Kraus shot some nice photos through a number of filters, but the best picture surely has been made by Thierry Legault from Muscat, Oman – the partial eclipse with the ISS transiting! Incredible.

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The online science magazine “spektrumdirekt” reports on the archeoseismological and paleoseismological studies in Baelo Claudia, Southern Spain. The article focusses on tsunami hazard in the Mediterranean region and the two earthquakes that devastated the Roman town of Baelo Claudia hundreds of years ago. more

Paleoseismicity.org wishes you happy holidays and a happy new year! Be aware of snow avalanches and don’t get stuck in the winter traffic!

We are looking forward to seeing you in warm and sunny Corinth.

Paleoseismology and archeoseismology do only rarely appear in the curriculae of geoscience studies. Those topics will be covered in courses on tectonics and structural geology in most universities. Practical courses that allow applying the knowledge in the field can be a very good supplement, but in Germany, active faults are rare. RWTH Aachen University therefore organized a field trip to Greece, where active faults, fault scarps, archeological sites and beautiful outcrops are omnipresent.

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The Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America has published a Special Issue on the 2008 Wenchuan, China, Earthquake. This event, also known as the Sichuan Earthquake, was one of the most devastating natural disasters in the last decade. On 12 May, 2008, an earthquake with a magnitude of Mw7.9 happened on the Beichuan fault, leaving at least 69,000 people dead and millions homeless. It is estimated that some $140 billion will be needed to rebuild the damaged infrastructure and houses. more

Nadine published a paper on Lake Ohrid at Biogeosciences (open access): Evolution of ancient Lake Ohrid: a tectonic perspective. Authors are N. Hoffmann, K. Reicherter, T. Fernández-Steeger and C. Grützner, Biogeosciences, 7, 3377–3386, 2010; www.biogeosciences.net/7/3377/2010/ – doi:10.5194/bg-7-3377-2010. Enjoy reading!

Klaus more