After the 1st Iberfault meeting in 2010, the 2nd meeting will take place in Lorca, Spain from 22-24 October, 2014. Any research on active tectonics and paleoseismology in Iberia is welcome, a special focus will be set on the QUAFI database. The conference will be organized by José Martinez Díaz (UCM), Eulàlia Masana (UB) and Miguel A. Rodríguez (IGME). Lorca became famous in 2011 when a shallow MW5.1 earthquake killed 9 people and caused severe damages in the city (there is an ongoing discussion whether or not groundwater lowering for irrigation during the last decades has caused, triggered, or influenced the quake).
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A special issue on “Geology and Archaeology of Earthquakes” has currently been published in Cuaternario y Geomorfología (Quaternary and Geomoprhology, ISSN: 0214-1744), which is the official journal of the Spanish Quaternary Union (AEQUA) and the Spanish Geomorphological Society (SEG): Vol 27, No 3-4 (2013) – Geología y Arqueología de Terremotos. The issue includes an introduction and ten research papers on earthquake geology and archaeoseismology of the Iberian Peninsula. Most papers are in English, few in Spanish. more
The Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Geological Survey of Belgium, Brussels, invites applicants for a 4-year research fellow (postdoctoral level) in coastal paleoseismology/Quaternary environmental change. Starting date: 1 June 2014.
The successful candidate will work in the framework of a 4-year research project, funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office: ‘QuakeRecNankai’ – Paleo-tsunami and earthquake records of ruptures along the Nankai Trough, offshore South-Central Japan.
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An interesting paper has been published in Nature Geoscience by Murphy et al.: Limit of strain partitioning in the Himalaya marked by large earthquakes in western Nepal. It doesn’t happen too often that paleoseismological papers are published in this journal and it’s also not too often that authors publish such beautiful photos. The authors identified a more than 60 km long rupture in W Nepal with 10 m of surface offset (strike-slip with a normal component). 14C dating points to seismic activity between AD 1165 and 1400. That’s pretty surprising for many reasons: more
Elsevier has put together a number of papers that were published in its various journals on the Wenchuan 2008 earthquake and made a “Virtual Special Issue” out of that. So, the good news is not about new papers on that quake (some work was already published in 2011), but rather that this selection of papers is free until 14 February 2014 via this link: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/tectonophysics/virtual-special-issues/virtual-special-issue-on-the-2008-wenchuan-earthquake/
That’s not open access as we like it, but at least a step in the right direction.
Typhoon Haiyan was among the strongest storms ever recorded and likely the strongest one to make landfall in historical times. This mega storm hit the Philippines with windspeeds of more than 300 km/h. It caused thousands of fatalities, widespread flooding and devastation especially in its direct path. NASA’s Terra satellite is equipped with the ASTER sensor. This sensor is perfect for producing false color images of land cover and vegetation. In this image series it becomes clear that typhoon Haiyan destroyed a significant part of the vegetation around Tacloban. more
The new issue of Seismological Research Letters has been published now and it contains a lot of articles for those liking old earthquakes. Some topics might sound familiar to you when you attended the PATA days conference as the authors presented parts of their work.
I have selected a few papers that are especially interesting to the paleoseismology community. They are about the use of Google StreetView for assessing macroseismic damage (Hinzen, 2013), archeoseismology in the Levant (Alfonsi et al. 2013), Earthquake rotated objects caused by the Emilia Romana earthquake – a fascinating EAE! (Cucci and Tertoulliani, 2013), a strong historical earthquake in Italy that likely did not happen at all (Camassi and Castelli, 2013) and new data on historical earthquakes in the Himalayan (Rajendran et al, 2013). Also, I added a paper on archaeoseismological investigations in northern Sicily that was published recently in Quaternary International (Bottari et al, 2013). Spend the rainy autumn evenings with a good read!
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On 15 October, 2013 a shallow Mw7.1 earthquake occured in Bohol, Philippines. The quake caused more than 200 fatalities and severe damages. Instrumental intensities of VIII – IX were recorded and the USGS estimates the maximum slip to be around 120 cm. Stéphane Baize from the French IRSN created a report not only on the seismological and tectonic background of the earthquake, but also on the earthquake environmental effects (EEEs) that were caused by the event. more
A fascinating series of relatively shallow minor earthquakes is currently occuring in Romania in the Galaţi area. Around 40 events occured during the last few days, most of them with magnitudes of ~3. Now a mb5.4 earthquake happened in more than 100 km depth. The quake was felt in wide parts of Romania and Bulgaria. Due to its depth no damages are expected. First moment tensor solutions do not give a clear picture yet, but it seems like NE-SW trending thrust event could have happened at the SE bend of the Carpatian Mountains. more
After the strong earthquake in Pakistan a good part of the media coverage was about the fascinating story of the new island that emerged off Gwadar. While this was really amazing I think now it’s time to think about the consequences of the quake itself. We have seen a shallow M7.7 event that produced severe shaking across a large area. Peak ground acceleration exceeded 1 g in the 0.3 s period and was still intense in longer periods. 515 people have reportedly been killed and more than 100,000 are homeless. more
