After the 1st Iberfault meeting in 2010, the 2nd meeting will take place in Lorca, Spain from 22-24 October, 2014. Any research on active tectonics and paleoseismology in Iberia is welcome, a special focus will be set on the QUAFI database. The conference will be organized by José Martinez Díaz (UCM), Eulàlia Masana (UB) and Miguel A. Rodríguez (IGME). Lorca became famous in 2011 when a shallow MW5.1 earthquake killed 9 people and caused severe damages in the city (there is an ongoing discussion whether or not groundwater lowering for irrigation during the last decades has caused, triggered, or influenced the quake).
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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
The Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Geological Survey of Belgium, Brussels, invites applicants for a 4-year research fellow (postdoctoral level) in coastal paleoseismology/Quaternary environmental change. Starting date: 1 June 2014.
The successful candidate will work in the framework of a 4-year research project, funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office: ‘QuakeRecNankai’ – Paleo-tsunami and earthquake records of ruptures along the Nankai Trough, offshore South-Central Japan.
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The Annual Meeting of the SSA 2014 will be held in Anchorage from 30 April – 2 May. Of course this will be all about earthquake science, but make sure to check out these sessions with special relevance for paleoseismology: more
Presidential Doctoral Research Fellowship, Dept. of Geology, Utah State University
The Department of Geology at Utah State University invites applications for a Presidential Doctoral Research Fellowship starting during the 2014-2105 academic year. This 4-year PhD fellowship will pay all tuition and a stipend of ~$20,000/year. Collaborative research will integrate fieldwork and a variety of geochemical and geo- and thermochronologic techniques to understanding processes in brittle fault zones and continental tectonics. more
An interesting paper has been published in Nature Geoscience by Murphy et al.: Limit of strain partitioning in the Himalaya marked by large earthquakes in western Nepal. It doesn’t happen too often that paleoseismological papers are published in this journal and it’s also not too often that authors publish such beautiful photos. The authors identified a more than 60 km long rupture in W Nepal with 10 m of surface offset (strike-slip with a normal component). 14C dating points to seismic activity between AD 1165 and 1400. That’s pretty surprising for many reasons: more
The EGU2014 will take place from 27 April – 2 May, 2014 in Vienna, Austria. The call for abstracts is open and submission deadline is 16 January, 2014. So it’s time to start thinking about which sessions would be interesting – not only for presenting own work, but also for listening to great talks. Here’s a list of sessions that a paleoseismologist could find interesting: more
Paleoseismologists from northern Central Europe are meeting regularly for discussions, usually twice a year, and the next small workshop will take place in Utrecht on 9 January, 2014. The one-day meeting is dedicated to present latest results of ongoing research on active faults in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany (intraplate seismicity). Participants from the Geological Survey of North Rhine-Westphalia, the VU Amsterdam, TuDelft, ULG Liége, the Royal Observatory of Belgium, TNO-GDN Utrecht and RWTH Aachen University will discuss the possibilities of joint projects and collect ideas on how to proceed with ongoing studies.
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Typhoon Haiyan was among the strongest storms ever recorded and likely the strongest one to make landfall in historical times. This mega storm hit the Philippines with windspeeds of more than 300 km/h. It caused thousands of fatalities, widespread flooding and devastation especially in its direct path. NASA’s Terra satellite is equipped with the ASTER sensor. This sensor is perfect for producing false color images of land cover and vegetation. In this image series it becomes clear that typhoon Haiyan destroyed a significant part of the vegetation around Tacloban. more
The new issue of Seismological Research Letters has been published now and it contains a lot of articles for those liking old earthquakes. Some topics might sound familiar to you when you attended the PATA days conference as the authors presented parts of their work.
I have selected a few papers that are especially interesting to the paleoseismology community. They are about the use of Google StreetView for assessing macroseismic damage (Hinzen, 2013), archeoseismology in the Levant (Alfonsi et al. 2013), Earthquake rotated objects caused by the Emilia Romana earthquake – a fascinating EAE! (Cucci and Tertoulliani, 2013), a strong historical earthquake in Italy that likely did not happen at all (Camassi and Castelli, 2013) and new data on historical earthquakes in the Himalayan (Rajendran et al, 2013). Also, I added a paper on archaeoseismological investigations in northern Sicily that was published recently in Quaternary International (Bottari et al, 2013). Spend the rainy autumn evenings with a good read!
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