The 6th Int’l Colloquium on Historical earthquakes & Paleoseismology studies took place in October 2018 in Han-sur-Lesse, Belgium. Our colleagues Koen Van Noten, Thierry Camelbeeck, and Thomas Lecocq have put together a nice summary of this event, pointing out future challenges in the field:
From 24 to 26 October 2018 55 scientists from 14 countries gathered at Han-sur-Lesse in Belgium for the annual gathering of the Colloquium on Historical earthquakes and Seismology. During this well attended conference, four invited keynote talks, 27 oral and 16 poster contributions were presented. Topics in this multidisciplinary colloquium spanned four themes. The first three themes are recurrent themes in this Colloquium series and focused on (1) Seismology and Historical earthquakes, (2) Paleoseismology and (3) Archaeoseismology. The organisers also specifically wanted to focus on (4) Earthquakes and natural caves; a discipline in which major progress was recently made. This topic was heavily debated during the field trip to the Han-sur-Lesse and Rochefort caves on 25 October 2018. Hereinafter we summarise what was presented (see program) by the attendants and which challenges seismologists – and friends – face these days.
The 9th PATA Days will take place from 24-29 June in Thessaloniki, Greece. The event is organised by Spyros Pavlides and Alex Chatzipetros and supported by INQUA/TERPRO.
The conference website is now online at http://www.patadays2018.org.
Save the date for the next round of great discussions about Paleoseismology, Active Tectonics, and Archaeoseismology! The PATA Days 2018 commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Thessaloniki earthquakes. more
These are the latets papers on paleoseismology, active tectonics, and archaeoseismology. Enjoy! more
Dear friends of active tectonics and paleoseismology,
Although the PATA Days in New Zealand are still five months away, it will be a long flight for most of us and I suggest to think about a good read on the plane already. Below you will find the latest publications that you may find interesting. If you prefer a good old hardcover book, why not buy Minoan Earthquakes right now? Enjoy reading! more
In a recent post on this forum, Angela Landgraf shared a digest of the long and winding road having led to the publication of Seismicity, Fault Rupture and Earthquake Hazards in Slowly Deforming Regions. Reading this post in the midst of wrapping up the edition of our Minoan Earthquakes volume, I could only sympathize with her concerns and hopes for the future of edited books at a time when impact factors and other author-level metrics all too often dictate academic choices.
Four years and a half (!) after the Out of Rubble Leuven workshop (29-30 November 2012), we are proud to announce the publication of Minoan Earthquakes: Breaking the Myth through Interdisciplinarity at Leuven University Press. Reasons for such delay are manifold but chief among them is our editorial choice of producing a coherent volume that might be used as an up-to-date toolbox for readers interested in the broader field of archaeoseismology – not just Minoan archaeoseismology – and its (necessary) relationship to other, better established, disciplines. This choice is reflected by the structure of the book and breadth of topics covered by its authors, ranging from seismology, paleoseismology, geophysics, architecture, engineering and, of course, Minoan archaeology. Although we will ultimately leave readers to judge how successful we were in this endeavor, we are encouraged by Iain Stewart’s appreciation of the volume: more
Today’s paper list is rather long; presumably all the papers written during the winter are coming to publication now. We have lots of different topics today, so I will skip the summary and just say: Enjoy reading! more
The registration for the 2017 PATA Days INQUA meeting (International meeting on Paleoseismology, Archaeoseismology & Active Tectonics) in New Zealand is now open. Safe the dates 13th – 16th November 2017 and make sure to check out the wonderful field trip options.
Registration website: https://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/News-and-Events/Events/PATA/Registration
See you all in New Zealand in November!
The city of Cusco in Perú has been hit by damaging earthquakes several times in its long history. In Inka times a strong earthquake destroyed parts of the city, and the Spanish invaders documented an earthquake that happened in 1650. Three hundred years later, in 1950, an earthquake destroyed large parts of modern Cusco and in 1986 a M6.1 event also led to damages in the city. In order to better understand the active normal faulting in the region, INGEMMET has launched the project Cusco-PATA (Paleoseismology, Archaeoseismology and Active Tectonics – “pata” also means “scarp” in Quechua). The project brings together scientists from Perú, Spain, France, and the UK. The 2017 field campaign started in mid-April with work on the archaeological sites in and around Cusco and paleoseismological trenching of the Pachatusan Fault. more
A new article on archaeoseismology appeared yesterday in Geoarchaeology’s Early View section. In this paper, Karabacak and colleagues present archaeoseismological evidence in the Roman stadium of ancient Kibyra (southwest Turkey). Earthquake archaeological damage includes surface faulting, systematically collapsed columns, dilated and collapsed walls, as well as rotated and displaced blocks. Their study suggests that a previously unknown seismic event (Io = VIII-IX) may have struck this region of Turkey around the 10-11 th century AD. more
