Two really strong earthquakes happened yesterday at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in the Jan Mayen Islands area. The first one had a magnitude of M6.6, the second one, around ten minutes later, had M5.3. Moment tensor solutions show clear strike slip along a transform fault west of the ridge. The seismicity map shows that events like yesterday’s don’t come as a suprise: more
On 11 April 2012, a Mw8.6 strike-slip earthquake occurred off Sumatra in a kind of intra-plate setting and came as a surprise to the earthquake community. Such a strong strike-slip event was not expected, we always thought that the huge thrust quakes at subduction zones were the only ones to release that much energy. Now a press release by CalTech reports on the latest studies that came to the result that many previously unknown perpendicular faults ruptured at this event. Immediately some journalists suggested that this might also happen at the San Andreas Fault. I do not know of any paleoseismological evidence that this has happened there before. However, how likely is this scenario?
Link to the paper: An earthquake in a maze: compressional rupture branching during the April 11 2012 M8.6 Sumatra earthquake. more
Our colleagues from the Bulgarian Academy of Science, Geological Institute “Strashimir Dimitrov“, have published a report on the coseismic and secondary effects of the May 22, 2012 Pernik earthquake, Western Bulgaria. The earthquake had a magnitude of MW5.6, see this special website of EMSC. Radulov et al. report intensities of up to VII (MSK) and various coseismic and secondary earthquake effects. more
Today is GeoScience Day (Geotag) at RWTH Aachen University! Organized by the Chair of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology, this event will start at 9:30 am in the Couvenhalle, Aachen. Geoscience-related talks and a poster exhibition will only be some parts of the very interesting program. The Geo summer party will be started after the “Geotag” at 6:00 pm at the parking lot of the Geoscience Institute at Wüllnerstraße. Come and see! Follow the Geotag on Twitter (hashtag #GEOTAG) and Facebook, and visit the official website! 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.
Since ten days I am in Greece now with a dozen of students. We started with an excursion in the western Peloponessus area and had a look at the regional tectonics, sedimentology (mainly Neogene Flysch units and young beach rocks), the large limestone horsts of Gavrovo and Ionian units, Ancient Olympia and recent mass movements. Then we began with field work for BSc, MSc and PhD theses. more
Now that the abstract submission deadline has passed you might be interested in somehow paleoseismicity-related sessions at the EGU2012. I decided to group the session by topic and my choice is absolutely based on personal interests. Sorry if I don’t mention every earthquake-related session.
The University of Oklahoma has set up a “Global Geo-Referenced Field Photo Library“. Once registered, users may upload and geotag their (geological) field photos. Additionally, you can provide information on the geology/geomorphology. This could become a nice database if more people start uploading their images. Imagine you have a braided river system and you can compare different years and seasons. It’s up to you if you want to make your pictures public or if you prefer to keep them private.
The Geosciences Center at the National Autonomous University of Mexico invites applications for Assistant Professor/Researcher Position with expertise in Paleoseismology and Neotectonics. Applicants are required to have a PhD, basic knowledge of Spanish (no fluency is needed), and expertise in field-based Paleoseismology or closely related fields. Applicants with some experience in Landslides effects and evaluation are particularly encouraged.
The Turkey M7.2 earthquake turned out to be a really desastrous event. More than 500 people died, more than 2,000 houses were destroyed. Currently, international aid is reaching the epicentral area. Chris Rowan has a good article on the geological background (an earlier one here), History of Geology discusses the paleoseismicity of that region. The German Aerospace Agency (DLR) prepared some quick response maps for the Van and Ercis areas. Nice work!
Pa·le·o·seis·mic·i·ty [ pālē·ə·sīz·mĭs′ĭ·tē ] noun, plural -ties. Ancient earthquake activity.
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