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The Japan M9.0 earthquake and the following tsunami are well documented by videos, photographs, sea-level measurements, seismograms etc. But how do we recognize such huge events if they happened some thousands of years ago? If there’s no historical report we would use earthquake environmental effects (EEE) for characterizing the earthquake and paleoseismicity. Let’s look what would be left from a 5000 year old earthquake and tsunami. more

An earthquake with a magnitude of Mw9.0 has occured 130 km east of Honshu, Japan in a depth of ~25 km. This had been the fourth or fifth strongest earthquake to be recorded by instrumental seismology. The quake caused significant destruction to the Honshu Island and triggered a tsunami that  destroyed a number of harbours. In some places (Sendai), tsunami heights were reported to exceed 10 m. A tsunami warning has been released for wide parts of the Pacific, but in Hawaii only 1 m was observed, therefore the warnings for the US West Coast have been lowered. more

The Christchurch earthquake was the main topic of the Geoblogosphere this week. A great analysis on the effects was provided by Dave Petley in his Landslide Blog. Highly Allochthonous reasoned on seismic lensing, Ontario Geofish posted a lot on building security, and countless news sites came up with photos and reports. Frank Taylor, who hosted the GoogleEarthBlog before he left for a sailing trip around the world, was in Christchurch next to the Cathedral when the quake happened. On his Tahina Expedition website he reports on his experiences.

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A M6.3 earthquake hit Christchurch, New Zealand on 22 February (21 Feb in UTC), leaving at least 75 people dead and hundreds injured or missing. Hundreds of houses were destroyed, including the Christchurch Cathedral, and damages will probably sum up to some billion dollars. On 4 September 2010 (3 Sept in UTC), a M7.0 event struck Christchurch, but then no one was killed. So: what’s the difference between the two events?

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A nice short discussion about the Lorito et al., 2011 paper regarding the seismic gap at the Chilean coast and seismic slip during the 2010 earthquake, can be found at Highly Allochthonous. The discussion highlights the paper findings under the glance of the recent Bio-Bio earthquake from Friday, which took place in this so called Darwin gap.

Today on Friday, 11 February, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake occurred offshore in Chile near Concepcion at  36.5° S and 73° W in a depth of 28km. The MMI at the nearby large cities was reported by the USGS with V.

Update: The magnitude was corrected to 6.8. The earthquake was followed one hour later by a further event with a magnitude of 5.3 and 4 hours later again by a more shallow 6.3.
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In its latest issue, EOS reports on the European Science Foundation conference “Submarine Paleoseismology – The Offshore Search of Large Holocene Earthquakes” which was held in Obergurgl, Austria from 11-16 September 2010.

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The Accredtionary Wedge #30 blog carnival hosted by Mountain Beltway came up with a tasting idea in January: The Geological Bake Sale. Explore and enjoy thematic food like the moon surface cake, the pillow lava bread and the debris flow vegetables. If you create a sweet fault or a tasty trench, we promise to publish it on paleoseismicity.org.  more

The California Geological Survey provides a great online-tool for geoscientist: A fault map of California (Alquist-Priolo-Fault-Zone with all datasets available in PDF and GIS format for free! Start here.

A volunteer panel that assesses earthquake risks in Utah said it examined nearly 130 school buildings in the state and found more than half fail to meet federal earthquake safety guidelines. Bad news from here.

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The Alaska Science Center is advertising five new permanent research geologist positions.  Applications are open between December 1, 2010 and February 15, 2011, and that selection will occur during late spring of 2011. More information on their homepage, including the following announcement:

“This hiring initiative inaugurates a team approach to geologic research in Alaska (Photo gallery). The five positions will together make up a working group that will respond to the USGS’ ongoing need for research in framework geology of the 49th state.  Project work is expected to support a broad range of research topics related to crustal evolution and surficial processes.  We expect projects will involve collaboration with researchers from other USGS offices, federal agencies, state agencies, and academia.
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