Our colleague Efthymios Lekkas kindly uploaded a new report on the recent South Lefkada Earthquake. If you can read Greek, have a look at this website: http://www.edcm.edu.gr/. Alternatively, you can download the slideshow from his personal website here as a PDF: http://www.elekkas.gr/images/stories/Frontpage/2015_Lefkada/lefkada2015.pdf
The PDF contains info on the tectonic setting, historical and instrumental seismicity, followed by a collection of the earthquake (environmental) effects. more
On 17 November, 2015, a MW6.4 strike-slip earthquake occurred in Lefkada Island, Greece. Lefkada is close to the Cephalonia Transform Fault and has repeatedly experienced strong shaking in the past. The most recent event caused two fatalitites, some damage, and resulted in widespread environmental earthquake effects (EEE). A team of scientists visited the epicentral area after the quake and recorded the damage and the EEEs. They wrote a preliminary report, which can be downloaded here: Lefkada 17 Nov 2015 earthquake report (PDF, 3.9MB).
They document mass movements, damage to buildings, and present first data from seismology, GPS and satellite geodesy.
Thanks to George for sending us the report!
We published a new study dealing with paleoseismological work on the Milesi Fault near Athens, Greece. A slip rate was estimated based on GIS work, mapping, and trenching. Four surface-rupturing earthquakes in the last 4-6 ka were found, and we estimate magnitudes of around M6.2. With these input parameters, we developed a seismic hazard scenario that also takes into account site effects. Our results show that the official seismic hazard zonation in Greece, which is based on instrumental and historical records, contradicts geological data. We also show that extension in this region is not only confined to the Southern Evoikos Gulf graben system, but a significant amount of extension is accommodated by active faults closer to Athens. more
The 16 World Conference on Earthquake Engineering will be held from 9-13 January, 2017, in Santiago de Chile. Note that the deadline for short abstracts submission is 23 November, 2015! Abstracts can be submitted via this link.
This meeting comes with a number of sessions which are interesting for earthquake geologists, paleoseismologists and those of us who deal with seismic hazard assessments. Among them: more
I’ve spent several weeks in Eastern Kazakhstan this summer for paleoseismological field work. During the first part of this trip we looked at some thrust and strike-slip faults in the Ili Basin and the Saty area. The second part was almost entirely devoted to study the Dzhungarian Fault. I’ll blog about this second part later. Eleanor, David, Austin and me were the UK representatives in our team. We were so lucky to have Kanatbek from Kyrgyzstan and Aydin from Kazakhstan with us. They did not only lead us to all the interesting places and helped us to understand the geology and the tectonics, but they also did a fanatastic job organizing the field trip and dealing with the local surprises, which as you know happen in basically every field trip.
Our first study site was located at the northern boundary of the Ili Basin, where we did some work last year already. more
Greece is a Disneyland for neotectonics and active faulting research. Some of the most important findings in earthquake science have been achieved in Greece, its historical catalogue is one of the longest on Earth, and paleoseismology, archaeoseismology & tsunami studies are abundant. These are many good reasons to consider registration for the 14th Int’l Conference of the Geological Society of Greece (Thessaloniki, May 25-27, 2016), especially since the programme is full of earthquake science stuff. The deadline for submitting papers is September 30.
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Earthquake Environmental Effects (EEE) have proven to be valuable for describing past earthquakes and their geological imprints. The ESI2007 is a relatively new intensity scale dedicated to such effects, but also integrating traditional macroseismic scales. Examples of ESI2007 intensities assigned to large earthquakes are being collected in the EEE web catalogue hosted by the ISPRA and ESI2007-related work is conducted in the framework of INQUA.
Another milestone now has been achieved with the ISPRA volume “Earthquake Environmental Effect for seismic hazard assessment: the ESI intensity scale and the EEE Catalogue”. This book is now available online here. It contains updates on the ESI2007, examples of applications, documentation of the EEE Android App, a huge reference list and, most importantly, the ESI2007 description in ten languages: more
Phew, this was an intense week and a great one too! The Fucino15 meeting on paleoseismology, active tectonics and archaeoseismology is over and hopefully everyone safely arrived back home. Here’s a brief report on some of the science that happened at the meeting. Since we had ~50 oral presentations, only an overview is possible here. In the following days I’ll add more details about the field trips. A big thank you to the Italian organizing team who did an amazing job – grazie mille! more
It’s been a while since the last update on paleoseismology literature. BSSA’s latest issue has some interesting studies that you should check, and there’s even more to discover. Also, there is some new work on (paleo-)tsunamis and historic large earthquakes. If you feel that important new papers are missing, drop us a mail! more
The EGU2015 will be held from 12 – 17 April in Vienna, but the abstract deadline is much closer: Day after tomorrow, 7 January! So if you haven’t already done so, it’s time to have a look at paleoseismology-related sessions at EGU: more
