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Our colleague Gregory De Pascale advertises a PhD position in Iceland:

Do you want to do your PhD in Earth Sciences and research on an exciting Plate boundary in the North Atlantic? Earthquakes are the outcome of plate tectonic motions and important geological hazards and Iceland is a world class laboratory to study these complex systems. Although abundant modern seismicity including historic damaging events and complex tectonic and volcanic interactions are observed, little is known about the active faults, generally normal and strike slip, in Iceland that are responsible for these earthquakes and have an important control on eruptive centers.

The HI (i.e. University of Iceland)-based PhD student that will live in Reykjavik and will focus on the active faults in Iceland in a funded 3-year PhD in Geology project under the supervision of Associate Professor Gregory De Pascale. Applicant must be functional in written and spoken English. Start date is second half of 2024. This will be part of the Faculty of Earth Science and the Institute of Earth Sciences based in Reykjavik.

This month’s list has everything: classic paleoseismology, tsunami studies, archaeology and historical seismology, lake turbidites from the Alps, deformed soft sediments, folds and faults, tidal notches and geodesy, etc.. Enjoy reading and drop me an email in case I have missed something.

We have a long list of papers this month. Many paleoseismology studies including conceptual work, historical seismology, and interesting geomorphology and tsunami papers. Enjoy reading and let me know if I’ve missed something. 

This is a guest blog by Octavi Gómez-Novell, Universitat de Barcelona, visiting researcher at Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain). Contact: octgomez@ub.edu

Paleoseismic data are punctual and highly localized in defined fault strands, while earthquake surface ruptures cover much larger and complex regions in comparison. This makes the identification of paleoearthquakes in trenches strongly dependent on the slip that those particular events had at each trench site, as well as on the continuity and quality of the stratigraphy for those paleoearthquakes to be dated and well-constrained in time. For this reason, paleoseismologists always seek to increase observations by trenching several sites along fault deformation zones with the premise that more observational data might: 1) complete the paleoearthquake catalogues closer to the real event count that actually occurred, 2) reduce the event age and detection uncertainties and 3) give insight about surface rupture characteristics. While all of these premises are correct and proven successful in several cases, the truth is that in a handful of other cases increasing observations can significantly difficult the correlation of datasets between sites, making such interpretations highly subjective. For instance, in very populated paleoseismic datasets and/or those with large event date uncertainties there will be multiple correlation options; which is the right one? After all, even though based on observations, paleoseismic data are interpretations, hence models that should be treated as such. Thus, can we improve correlation using numerical modelling?

This is a guest post by Simone Bello from the Università degli Studi G. d’Annunzio Chieti e Pescara, Italy.

The QUIN project (QUaternary fault strain INdicators database) stems from the initiative of a group of researchers to make the structural-geological data of the potentially seismogenic faults cropping out along the entire Apennines in Italy available to the scientific community.

Strain and regional stress databases of active deformation patterns are largely available in the literature but are almost exclusively derived from earthquakes and geodetic data. However, in areas such as Italy, where the regional stress field has remained unchanged over the last few million years, the analysis of structural data relevant for seismogenic purposes can be extended at least to the overall Quaternary time interval. QUIN was born with this assumption. It is designed to integrate, unify, and elaborate high-detailed geologic information on potentially seismogenic faults and provides data on the location, attitude, kinematics, and deformation axes of Fault Striation Pairs (FSPs) measured along Quaternary faults.

Enjoy our latest papers on large earthquake and active faults!

Here’s the latest list of papers on paleoseismology and related fields. Interesting stuff from the NZ and US seismic hazard models, a photo of the fault scarp that formed underwater in the 2011 Tohoku-oki Earthquake, and much more. Have a great 2024 everyone!

Our colleague Tejpal Singh and his co-guest editors Riccardo Caputo and Chittenipattu P. Rajendran invite contributions to their special issue “Earthquake Geology of Plate Margins and Plate Interiors: Integrating Classical Methods with New Approaches” to be published in Geosciences. Please find more info here:

This will be the last paper list of the year, time is flying. We have classical paleoseismological studies, historical earthquake research, a few papers on secondary effects, but also studies looking into more general physics questions of large earthquakes. Enjoy reading!

This has become a long list again, and I partly blame the New Zealanders who are currently publishing a lot of studies related to their new hazard model. Really cool work! But of course the inclined readers will also find other gems for their taste. As always – please send me paleoseismology studies that I have missed. Enjoy reading!