During the month of March 2014, Sascha and I along with Tobi and Lauretta (BSc students from RWTH University) were in Greece for fieldwork. The fieldwork campaign started on the island of Crete; our institute at RWTH Aachen has a joint project with Mainz University to carry out paleotsunami investigations on the island. The western part of Crete was uplifted by approximately 9 m during the 21st July AD 365 earthquake and also hit by the associated tsunami. Due to the strong seismic and highly tsunamigenic activity of the nearby Hellenic Trench, it is suggested that numerous earlier tsunamis have also struck the island. more
From 14-18 October 2013 a field training course will take place in Central Argentina. The course and a workshop are organized by the Sam-GeoQuat Group, the topic is: “From the Pampean Ranges to the North Pampa: Tectonic and climatic forcing on the Late Quaternary landscape evolution of Central Argentina”. Deadline for registration is 30 August, so hurry if you are interested. Download the 1st circular (pdf, <1 MB) here: 1-course-sam-geoquat2013 more
Today we went for field work again – mapping active faults in Northern Attica, trying to find out about offsets and slip rates, and scouting sites for applying Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) later. We found some very beautiful fault scarps and measured a good number of strike and dip values. At two locations we also recorded topographic profiles across the scarps in order to get an idea about the vertical offset. Combined with the assumption that these scarps are post-glacial, we can estimate slip rates. more
Update: Read the article of The Times of Oman here!
Today at 11:52:50 UTC a magnitude 6.3 earthquake occurred in SW Iran close to the shore in a depth of 10 km. The event was widely felt in Iran and across the NE Arabian Peninsula. Moment tensor solution reveal a thrust mechanism, which is in perfect concordance with the historic seismicity pattern. The event was caused by the convergence of the Arabian and Eurasian plates, that not only built up the impressive Zagros Mountains, but also lead to the formation of the Makran Subduction Zone. Relative plate motions there are as fast as 20 mm/yr in the central part. more
I have made a video of our fieldwork in Greece, because I guess somehow we must communicate to the public what our work is about. Also, we must encourage young people to study geosciences. Well, now I concentrated on the second task: Hey, clever young people out there! Do you like science? Do you like nature? Are you interested in the big questions like “Where does this rock come from? When will the next earthquake happen? Where can I find groundwater? Why do volcanoes erupt? Which coast is threatened by Tsunamis?” Do you like to travel abroad, to work hard and to still have fun in the evenings? Do you want to meet nice people? If you answered “yes” to at least one of the above, think about studying geoscience. more
