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Richard Styron has released a new, improved version of his Global CMT viewer webmap. The earthquake data are from globalcmt.org, updated every four hours, and colour-coded by depth (purple to yellow = shallow to deep). The tool also displays a number of major faults from the ATA and HimaTibetMap databases. This webmap is a fast and easy way to find interesting earthquakes and to explore global seismicity. Plus, it’s a beautiful map. Thanks Richard for that great application!

The SSA meeting in Denver (April 2017) will be full of interesting sessions on paleoseismology and earthquake geology, among them:

• The Future of Past Earthquakes, Session Chairs: David Schwartz, Ramon Arrowsmith, William Lettis, Koji Okumura, Daniela Pantosti, Thomas Rockwell
• Earthquake Geology and Paleoseismic Studies of the Intermountain West: New Methods and Findings on Seismic Hazard Characterization of Low Slip Rate Faults, Session Chairs: Seth Dee, Stephen Angster
• Earthquake Impacts on the Natural and Built Environment, Session Chairs: Eric Thompson, Kate Allstadt, Kishor Jaiswal, Nilesh Shome
• Estimating Earthquake Hazard from Geodetic Data, Session Chairs: Jeff Freymueller, Elieen Evans, Jessica Murray
• Fault Mechanics and Rupture Characteristics from Surface Deformation, Session Chairs: Lia Lajoie, Kendra Johnson, Edwin Nissen
• Intraplate Earthquakes: Central and Eastern North America and Worldwide, Session Chairs: Lillian Soto-Cordero, Christine Powell, Will Levandowski
• The Mw7.8 Kaikoura Earthquake, Session Chairs: Bill Fry, Matt Gerstenberger
• Paleoseismology of Subduction Earthquake Cycles, Session Chairs: Rob Witter, Ian Shennan
• Scaling and Empirical Relationships of Moderate to Large Earthquakes: Re-scaling or Re-thinking?, Session Chairs: Laura Peruzza, P. Martin Mai, Lucilla Benedetti
• Toppled and Rotated Objects in Recent, Historic, and Prehistoric Earthquakes, Session Chairs: Klaus-G. Hinzen, Rasool Anooshehpoor
• Varied Modes of Fault Slip and their Interactions – Slow Earthquakes, Creep to Mega Quakes, Session Chair: Abhijit Ghosh

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A continuous flow of images from the New Zealand earthquake reaches the earthquake geology community, and we’re probably all amazed by the coseismic offsets and other earthquake effects. However, the flow of papers on paleoseismology, tsunami, and active tectonics also does not stop and here is my digest for December. Enjoy reading!

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Dear friends and colleagues,

We are very sorry to announce that the 8th PATA Days in New Zealand can not take place in April 2017. The meeting has to be postponed to November 2017. The Kaikoura Earthquake has not only shaken up the entire country, but also disrupted the organisation of the PATA Days. All NZ earthquake geologists are currently in the field and they will have to deal with the EQ aftermath for the next couple of months. It is just technically impossible to organise the meeting in April under these circumstances. It’s also going to be really hard to get the NZ sponsorship that we counted on, as funds from places like the Earthquake Commission will be diverted to the Kaikoura EQ response & follow up research.

Of course, the field trip plans will also have to change completely. In November 2017 we will be able to see some of the most stunning effects of the Kaikoura Earthquake. In April, many roads will still be shut and many landowners will still be recovering and may not be amenable to curious scientists. By November next year, if we can incorporate some community outreach, then it will be much more appropriate to bring a field trip through the impacted area – pending open roads.

We are very sorry for any inconvenience this may cause and we hope for your understanding. Currently the NZ organising team is working hard to fix new dates and locations. The official PATA website will be updated as soon as they’re back in office for a couple of hours.

On behalf of the organisers,

Christoph & the EGSHaz team

Annals of Geophysics has just published a special issue on the devastating Amatrice Earthquake series in Central Italy: Vol 59, Fast Track 5 (2016): The Amatrice seismic sequence: preliminary data and results.

The special issue, edited by Marco Anzidei and Silvia Pondrelli, contains lots of field reports, first assessments, and plenty of primary data. Plus, it’s all OPEN ACCESS! more

The M7.8 Kaikoura Earthquake in New Zealand produced one of the most complex ruptures ever observed, involving many different faults. Earthquake environmental effects include up to 10 m offset at the Kekerengu Fault, secondary ruptures, a tsunami, coseismic uplift, landslides and rockfalls, liquefaction, and maybe even earthquake lights. Lots of blogs and websites provide coverage on this earthquake, e.g. Geonet, the Landslide Blog, and The Trembling Earth. Our colleagues from the Research Group on Earthquake Geology in Greece worked on the landslides that happened during the earthquake. George Papathanassiou sent me the link to their Preliminary Map of Co-Seismic Landslides for the M 7.8 Kaikoura, New Zealand Earthquake. more

While the attention is still on the seismic sequence in Italy, a number of new papers have been published on paleoseismology, tsunamis, and active tectonics. Enjoy reading!

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Our friend and colleague Alessandro Michetti pointed me to this impressive video. It shows the surface ruptures of the 30 October earthquake from a helicopter: more

Our colleague Paolo Galli is in the epicentral area of the M6.6 Italy earthquake and he sent us some amazing images. I’ll just reproduce them here without further comment, they speak for themselves. Captions by Paolo. Thanks a lot Paolo, and stay safe! more

On 26 October two shallow normal faulting earthquakes occurred in Central Italy, very close to the epicentre of the Amatrice Earthquake from earlier this year. The first quake reached a magnitude of M5.5 and was followed by a M6.1 just two hours later. The events caused serious damage (see here for a video and some images), but luckily only one person died as most people had left their houses after the first moderate shock. This could have turned out much worse. Apparently the quakes at least partly filled the gap between the 1997 Colfiorito events and the 2016 Amatrice Earthquake. more