1. Key points
This is the first attempt to apply a computational fluid dynamic modeling-based quantitative “fossil seismograph” to develop a large earthquake record.
The record is calibrated to historic earthquakes, for which the Dead Sea area has a famously long span, and it confirms a clustered earthquake recurrence pattern and a group-fault temporal clustering model.
The record yields much shorter mean recurrence for large (≤ 1.4 kyr vs. 7-11 kyr) and moderate (≤ 500 yr vs. 1600 yr) earthquakes than previously obtained, thus reveals a much higher seismic hazard than previously appreciated on this slow-slipping plate boundary.
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The 10th PATA Days, which were planned for September 2019 in Israel, have to be cancelled. The next regular PATA meeting will therefore be held in Chile 2020. This is the bad news. The good news is that there will be a student summer school organized by the IFG EGSHaz from 24-27 September, 2019, in Prague (Czech Republic). Petra Štěpančíková and her team are currently working on the schedule. The summer school will mainly address students and PhD students interested in earthquake geology, paleoseismology, and tectonic geomorphology. We will likely have two days of lectures & exercises and two days of field trips. More information will be available soon, so stay tuned.
Please make sure to consider attending the INQUA Congress in Dublin (25-31 July, 2019). There will be three sessions organized by our IFG:
- Earthquake Geology and Seismic Hazards: from earthquake mapping of historical and prehistoric earthquakes to paleoseismology (Ioannis Papanikolaou, Stéphane Baize, Christoph Grützner)
- Paleoseismology of plate interiors under Pleistocene climate changes (Klaus Reicherter, Petra Štěpančíková, Małgorzata Pisarska-Jamroży)
- Development of soft-sediment deformation structures (SSDS) and differences between non-seismic and seismic structures (Małgorzata
(Gosia) Pisarska-Jamroży, A.J. Tom van Loon, Barbara Woronko, Andreas Börner)
Also, this session could be of interest:
- Subduction zone palaeoseismology (Emma Hocking, Ed Garrett, Jasper Moernaut)
See you in Dublin and Prague!
Ioannis, Petra, Christoph
A new book on the Dead Sea Transform has been published by Springer:
DEAD SEA TRANSFORM FAULT SYSTEM: REVIEWS
Together with Prof. Zvi Garfunkel and Prof. Zvi Ben-Avraham, I am a co-editor of this book. The book focuses on various aspects of the fault system, from geophysics, to tectonics, paleolimnology, hydrology, seismicity, and PALEOSEISMICITY. Most relevant to this blog are the papers by Agnon and by Marco & Klinger.
- Shmulik Marco and Yann Klinger review in a new light the on-fault paleoseismic studies carried out along the DST.
- Amotz Agnon delves into the off-fault seismite archives (lake, cave).
Here is a link to the book on the Springer site: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-94-017-8872-4
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Here’s my list of recent publications that deal with paleoseismology and related topics.
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It’s not been long since I’ve listed some recent paleoseismology papers, but it seems like it’s publishing season. So here is more stuff to read during the holidays… more
A lot of interesting stories on earthquakes, tsunamis and paleoseismology made it to the media last week – no wonder as the EGU2014 and the SSA meeting took place at the same time. I will try to catch up and I start with tsunami hazard in Israel:
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Researchers have discovered the remains of a royal wine cellar at the Tel Kabri archaeological site in Northern Israel. They found ~40 crushed jars, which equals about 3,000 bottles, and they were able to analyse the chemistry of the organic traces from the jars. It’s clear that they contained red and white wine, which was spiced with “honey, mint, cinnamon bark, juniper berries and resins” as it was common 1,700 BC. The fact that all jars contained wine with the same chemical fingerprint led the researchers to conclude that the wine had a high quality and was, therefore, likely part of the Canaan palace’ reserve. This is already a pretty good story, but the New York Times also mentiones that “the cellar was destroyed 3,600 years ago in some violent event, perhaps an earthquake“. Yee-haw, archeoseismology! Here we go! But wait – what do we actually know about the earthquake? more
Currently I spend my time working on some papers that deal with tsunamis in the Eastern Mediterranean and earthquakes in Spain. Searching for literature and looking for data on the Minoan catastrophe I came across this new open access publication by Simon Jusseret and Manuel Sintubin:
Our colleagues from IGCP567 – Earthquake Archaeology put a lot of effort into getting rid of catastrophism and into making archeoseismology a more reliable, quantitative science. By the way, don’t miss the next workshop on archeoseismology and active tectonics in Mexico 2012! more
I hope you have reserved some time for reading – here comes plenty of great new material on one of the most interesting tectonic features on earth, the Dead Sea Transform. The Israel Journal of Earth Sciences has published a special issue: The Dead Sea Rift as a natural laboratory for neotectonics and paleoseismology, Volume 58, Number 3 – 4. The papers are an outcome of the 2009 INQUA joint Israel/Jordan fieldtrip with the same name. I was lucky enough to have participated in that field trip. It was for sure one of the best field trips I ever had. more
This week’s centerfault is a very prominent one that you will know for sure – the Dead Sea Fault. The sinistral strike-slip fault marks the boundary between the Arabian plate and the Sinai. The entire system is more than 600 km long and has accommodated ~107 km of slip since Miocene. Magnitude 7 is no problem for this structure and the recurrence intervalls are short. more