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A lot of new papers have been published on paleoseismology, earthquake geology, active tectonics and tsunamis last month. We have research on slowly deforming regions, on the active tectonics of Mexico, New Zealand, Armenia, and Iran, new data from the Kumamoto earthquake, plus some marine/coastal paleoseismology and tsunami studies. Enjoy reading!

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The EMERGEO Working Group has conducted extensive field work after the 24 August 2016 Amatrice Earthquake in Italy and put together a report on the coseismic effects. The report is in English and can be downloaded from the INGV earthquake Blog here: PDF (6.1 mb)

The report includes data on environmental earthquake effects like surface ruptures, fractures, landslides, and rockfalls. More than 2400 data points have been collected.

Please cite the report as follows:

• EMERGEO Working Group (2016). The 24 August 2016 Amatrice Earthquake: Coseismic Effects. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.61568

The EMERGEO Working Group consists of Pucci S., De Martini P.M., Nappi R., Pantosti D., Civico R., Ricci T., Moro M., Cinti F., Brunori C.A., Di Naccio D., Sapia V., De Ritis R., Gori S., Falcucci E., Caciagli M., Pinzi S., Villani F., Gaudiosi G., Burrato P., Vannoli P., Kastelic V., Montone P., Carafa M., Patera A., Vallone R. (all INGV) and Saroli M., Lo Sardo L., Lancia M. (University of Cassino and southern Lazio).

Thanks to Francesca Cinti for pointing me to this!

A special session on the Amatrice Earthquake of 24 August in Italy was held at the Congress of the Geological Society of Italy (Naples, 7 September, 2016). A video of the entire session is now available online. Although the talks are in Italian, it is easy to understand and the slides tell the story.

See the full video here: more

There will be a Special Session on the Amatrice Earthquake of 24 August at the Congresso Società Geologica Italiana, 7 September, 2016, in Napoli. See http://www.sginapoli2016.it/home/ for the congress details.

Session programme:

Il terremoto del centro Italia del 24 agosto 2016 7 settembre 2016, ore 20.00, Aula tbd

Chairmen: Carlo Doglioni, Alessandro Maria Michetti

• 20.00 – INGV Amatrice working group : La sequenza sismica di Amatrice 2016
• 20.10 – Bonano M., Castaldo R., Casu F., De Luca C., De Novellis V., Lanari R., Manunta M., Manzo M., Pepe A., Pepe S., Tizzani P., Zinno I. : Deformazione superficiale associata al terremoto del centro Italia del 24 agosto 2016: primi risultati da interferometria radar dallo spazio
• 20.20 – Lavecchia G., Brozzetti F., Boncio P., de Nardis, Cirillo, Ferrarini: controllo strutturale sulla sequenza sismica di Accumoli 2016 – analisi preliminare
• 20.30 – Blumetti A.M., Bonadeo L., Brunamonte F., Comerci V., Cowie P., Di Manna P., Ferrario M.F., Faure Walker J., Frigerio C., Fumanti F., Gregory L., Guerrieri L., Iezzi F., Livio F., McCaffrey K., Michetti A.M., Mildon Z., Phillips R., Piccardi L., Pompili R., Rhodes E., Roberts G., Vittori E., Walters R.J., Wedmore L., Wilkinson M. : Rotture al suolo ed effetti ambientali associati al terremoto del centro Italia del 24 agosto 2016: risultati preliminari e work in progress.
• 20.40 – Galli P. et al. : Distribuzione dell’intensità macrosismica e implicazioni sismotettoniche del terremoto del centro Italia del 24 agosto 2016:
• 20.50 – Amanti M. : Eventi franosi nell’area epicentrale del terremoto di Amatrice.

The Chilik-Chon Kemin Fault Zone is a major left-lateral strike-slip fault zone in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, just a few tens of kilometres east of Almaty and north of Lake Issyk Kul. It has seen one of the largest continental earthquakes ever recorded in 1889, with an estimated magnitude of ~M8.3. In July and August I had the chance to visit this fault zone for two weeks together with Angela Landgraf from Potsdam and Aidyn Mukambaev from the National Data Centre, thanks to a travel grant from COMET (thanks so much, COMET!) and with support from the EwF Project. We wanted to find out more details about the tectonic geomorphology of this fault zone and we wanted to study the slip rate and earthquake recurrence intervals. So we took our drone, shovels and picks and set off for a field trip into the mountainous wilderness. Since I will leave for another field trip to Kazakhstan (Dzhungarian Fault) tomorrow, I will leave you with some impressions from our field work and provide more information once the paper is published…
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It’s a busy summer for me with lots of field work going on, but there’s still time to read the latest papers on paleoseismology and earthquake geology. Here’s my latest paper round-up. No tsunami papers this time, I am sorry. Enjoy reading and as always, please don’t hesitate to tell me which papers I have missed.

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The 7th International INQUA Workshop on Paleoseismology, Active Tectonics and Archaeoseismology (PATA Days) took place last week in Crestone, CO. The meeting was organised by Jim McCalpin who did an amazing job – thanks Jim for inviting us to Crestone and for this wonderful conference. Prior to the meeting a six-day road trip to the Faults of the Wild West lead a group of ~20 people to the legendary sites of western US faults: Borah Peak, the Tetons, Wasatch, etc. On 29 May most participants gathered in Denver where the icebreaker took place. Early in the morning next day we started with a pre-meeting field trip to Crestone, driving into the Rocky Mountains, passing South Park, and arriving at Crestone just on time for lunch. more

It’s June and it’s time for a new paper round-up, isn’t it? When I compiled the list during the past weeks I already realized that there’s a lot of new literature out there, and I guess this month’s post is probably the longest list we’ve ever had – 21 articles! So here are the latest papers on paleoseismology, tsunamis (maaaany tsunami papers this time), and active tectonics. As always: Any suggestions are highly appreciated. Enjoy reading!

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Between 1885 and 1938, the northern Tien Shan at the border between present Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan experienced a remarkable series of five major earthquakes, exceeding M6.9 and reaching up to M ~ 8 (1885 Belovodskoe M6.9, 1887 Verny M7.3, 1889 Chilik M~8, 1911 Chon Kemin M8, and 1938 Kemino Chu M6.9). Combined, the seismic moments add up to almost moment magnitude 9, which is a significant amount of strain released in roughly 50 years and across an E-W stretch of less than 500 kilometers. Even more intriguing is the fact that the ruptured region is located more than thousand km north of the nearest plate boundary and associated India-Eurasia collision zone. The macroseismic areas of these earthquakes include the present-day capital of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek (Frunze) and the former capital and still largest city of Kazakhstan, Almaty (earlier names Alma Ata and Verny).
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On 16 April an earthquake of magnitude Mw7.0 hit the district of Kumamoto, Kyushu Island, Japan. The quake was preceeded by a Mw6.1 foreshock one day before. It occurred on the ENE striking, right lateral Futagawa-Hinagu fault zone. Our colleague Koji Okumura from Hiroshima University has prepared a short report on this surface-rupturing event. Download the report here (PDF, 612 kb). The report will be continuously revised and corrected, so check for regular updates. Thanks Koji for providing this summary!