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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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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

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

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