On 26 January and 3 February, two strong and shallow earthquakes of magnitude 6+ occured at the island of Kefalonia/Cephalonia in Western Greece. The events caused intense damage to buildings and infrastructure. A team of EERI (Earthquake Engineering Research Institute) scientists went to the island to map these kind of damages. Earthquake Environmental Effects (EEE) like rockfalls, landslides, and lateral spreading were also caused by the events. George Papathanassiou and his colleagues mapped these features and sent me the following photos from Lixouri. more
Two earthquakes of magnitude M6+ occured near the island of Kefalonia in Western Greece on 26 January and 3 February, 2014. Both were shallow strike slip events that are associated with the Kefalonia transform fault and caused not only damages to buildings and infrastructure, but also significant earthquake environmental effects (EEEs). Here I compile some photo and video sources from rockfalls and other features. more
Besides the two special issues on tsunamis and paleoearthquakes that I’ve already blogged about, some more interesting papers on paleoseismology have recently been published. They deal with paleoseismology of the North Anatolian Fault, with tectonic geomorphology of S Spain, and with the ESI scale applied on a quake in Kashmir. more
A special issue on “Geology and Archaeology of Earthquakes” has currently been published in Cuaternario y Geomorfología (Quaternary and Geomoprhology, ISSN: 0214-1744), which is the official journal of the Spanish Quaternary Union (AEQUA) and the Spanish Geomorphological Society (SEG): Vol 27, No 3-4 (2013) – Geología y Arqueología de Terremotos. The issue includes an introduction and ten research papers on earthquake geology and archaeoseismology of the Iberian Peninsula. Most papers are in English, few in Spanish. more
On 15 October, 2013 a shallow Mw7.1 earthquake occured in Bohol, Philippines. The quake caused more than 200 fatalities and severe damages. Instrumental intensities of VIII – IX were recorded and the USGS estimates the maximum slip to be around 120 cm. Stéphane Baize from the French IRSN created a report not only on the seismological and tectonic background of the earthquake, but also on the earthquake environmental effects (EEEs) that were caused by the event. more
It’s time to revive the Friday Links tradition, I just realized that it fell asleep in March…
A paper published in Science few hours ago deals with the energy release of one of the strangest mega-quakes that we have ever observed, the M8.3 Okhotsk event of 24 May 2013. The interesting thing is that is occurred in more than 600 km depth! In the same issue of the journal another paper describes attempts to perform analogue experiments of such events in the lab. If you just want to get a rough idea about the studies or have no access to science, I recommend to check out Andrew Alden’s article at kqed science. more
A new paper by Esposito et al. has been published in Springer’s Landslide Science and Practice that will help to better constrain intensities on the ESI scale. Landslides induced by twelve moderate to strong earthquakes events during the last 300 yrs have been analyzed. The authors calculated distance vs. magnitude and distance vs. ESI epicentral intensity relationships, similar to the famous correlations by Keefer (1984). more
It’s been a while since the last Friday links, so today’s list is rather long. Of course the Russian meteoroid-meteor-meteorite (yes, in this order!) was an absolutely amazing, though destructive phenomenon. The air blast was registered equivalent to an earthquake of magnitude 2.7. Read Livescience’s article here and read this text to get to know about meteors and seismograms in general. more
It’s Friday, friends, the weekend is near and here’s the Friday links. Today I collected some news on earthquakes, landslides and geoscience jobs. Have fun!
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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
