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Matthew’s WoGE #364 took us far out to South Georgia and on the Neumayer glacier – a phantastic example of rapid glacier retreat due to changing sea water temperatures. As you might immediately see from my image, I want to take you to a more comfortable area, but with some nice geology, too. Here’s the quiz:  more

After the great reports of Raúl and Pedro from the fieldtrip, I just want to say thank you to the organizers again. I also want to share a few photos. See you all in Aachen, 2013! more

In September, Klaus and me lead a MSc student excursion to southwestern Germany. We not only went through the entire stratigraphy of that area (mainly Triassic and Jura), but also visited the salt mine in Stetten, quarries in Dotternhausen (opalinus clay, posidonia schist, Malm), the Kaiserstuhl carbonatite volcano complex and the Upper Rhine Graben area. One of my personal highlights was the Freudenstädter Graben, a small tectonic graben striking NW-SE, whose NE main fault is exposed in an old mine in Hallwangen. more

Nature published three articles on the Sumatra April 2012 mega-strike-slip earthquakes. I am pretty sure that at least one of them will be discussed intensely. Earlier this year, two earthquakes with magnitudes of M8.6 and M8.2, respectively, occurred in the Indian Ocean off Sumatra. The epicentres were close to the epicentral area of the 2004 Christmas event, but further to the SW and entirely on the Indo-Australian plate. This was surprising for many reasons: We did not expect such strong strike-slip quakes, we did not expect them to happen intraplate, and we were surprised by the complex en echelon and orthogonal fault pattern.  more

Three papers published recently caught my eyes. First, Andrej Gosar investigated the earthquake environmental effects (EEEs) of the 12 April 1998 Mw =5.6 Krn Mountains earthquake, Slovenia. The quake measured VII-VIII on the EMS-98 scale, and Andrej found that the intensities reached the same values on the ESI2007 scale. He reports that the intensity distributions for both scales are comparable, but show some differences due to the sparsely populated epicentral area. The research concentrated on rockfalls for EEE determination. It’s a nice example that also moderate events can be characterized using the ESI2007 scale.

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Klaus and me went to the SSA 2012 annual meeting in San Diego in April. The conference was great and very focussed. I really like that kind of rather small meetings, where almost everything is interesting for me. I saw a lot of interesting posters and great talks and especially liked the paleoseismology and archeoseismology sessions (of course!).

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Dear colleagues,

we’ve just published the first circular for the upcoming 3rd workshop on earthquake geology, paleoseismology and archaeoseismology, Morelia, Mexico, 19-24 November 2012. Learn about the scientific program, the meeting program, costs and deadlines, the venue and organizers.

Download the flyer here (3 mb, pdf)!

The 3rd INQUA-IGCP 567 International Workshop on Active Tectonics, Paleoseismology and Archeoseismology will be held in Morelia (Mexico) from 18 – 24 November 2012. The workshop is the continuation of the BaeloClaudia2009 and Corinth2011 events. We invite all scientists in the fields of earthquake geology, paleoseismology, archeoseismology, tsunami studies, earthquake engineering, seismic hazard assessment to participate in the workshop. We will try to provide travel grants from INQUA and IGCP for young scientists. See Acambay1912.org for detailled information, registration and abstract submission.

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Elsevier is facing ongoing protests, especially from the blogosphere. Not only did thousands of scientists sign the boycott (no publishing, no reviewing, no editorial work), but more issues come up step by step. How much is an open access article? $0? Nope. Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week found out it’s 10.88 GBP (~13 €). Amazing. more

The Group on Active Tectonics (GAT) and the Environmental Geophysics University Laboratory (LUGA) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Campus Morelia seeks applicants for a Postdoctoral Research position. The candidate will pursue fundamental and applied research into either a) active tectonics and/or b) tsunami deposits and paleoseismology with focus on the Mexican Subduction Zone. The candidate will be responsible for the development and execution of field and laboratory research, and to conduct studies on the geologic signature left by great earthquakes and their tsunamis. The fields of application include earthquake hazard, tsunami hazard and long-term earthquake record of this active margin.

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