Posts in the category »   «  ( 15 Posts )

A new story came up recently that sounds like the L’Aquila case, but the other way round. Dr. Roger Bilham from the University of Colorado, a well-known earthquake researcher, was denied entry to India earlier this year. He was on a flight to Bhutan and supposed to change planes in New Delhi when Indian officials sent him back to the plane he just arrived on. Officially, he was accused with having the wrong type of visa. Himself and many colleagues, however, are sure that he was deported because he stated that the seismic hazard in India is underestimated. more

A new paper was just published on Active faulting in the north-eastern Aegean Sea Islands. Our colleague Alex Chatzipetros and his co-authors investigated the distribution of seismicity and faulting pattern at the islands of Lemnos, Aghios Efstratios, Lesvos, Chios, Samos and Ikaria. From this data and field analyses they concluded on the effects of active faulting on the local geomorphology. more

A strong earthquake rattled Japan today and caused some intense shaking in the Fukushima region. The quake had a magnitude of 7.3 and occurred at a depth of ~30 km. A tsunami warning was issued immediately, but until now (11:30 CET) it looks like no waves were created. more

A new paper on the archaeoseismology of Athens, Greece, was published in the Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering by AMraseys and Psycharis. The authors investigated two classical columns at the Akropolis which survived since classical times and modelled the behaviour of the structures under dynamic (seismic) load. They explain observed damages at the columns and also estimate maximum ground movement that would have toppled the columns. It looks like Old Athens has been relatively lucky in terms of earthquakes in the past, despite it is surrounded by active faults… more

Several new papers were recently published in the fields of tsunami research, tectonics, and liquefaction. Also, a new book on active faults is available. Let’s have a look what can be added to your book shelf or to your Christmas wish list: more

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS) has just published a new issue with lots of papers on marine and lake paleoseismology. So enough stuff for a good read on a cold and rainy autumn evening. The Special issue was edited by Daniela Pantosti, Eulàlia Gràcia, Geoffroy Lamarche, and Hans Nelson, and is an outcome of the European Science Foundation Research Conference: Submarine Paleoseismology – The Offshore Search of Large Holocene Earthquakes; Obergurgl, Austria, 11-16 September 2010. All articles are availabe for free download! Open access rules! more

Let’s see, this is my 1st post here, thanks again for the invitation. Today, an interesting story circulated through mass and science media. The article by Kremer et al. published yesterday in Nature Geoscience presents geophysical and sedimentological evidence of potential tsunamis in the rather exotic environment of Lake Geneva. This phenomenon is not new at all and has been investigated by others before, but I pretty much share the authors conclusion, that the hazard of tsunami-like events in continental lakes deserves higher attention in the future.

Two papers on man-made earthquakes have been published last week and both have had received media coverage. Especially now, few days after the L’Aquila trial, the public is interested in any earthquake story and so the new findings that severe earthquakes happened due to human action caused some attention. Additionally, it caused me a headache and triggered not an earthquake, but a feeling of anger. Let’s talk about some good examples for bad science communication. more

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

Two new tsunami papers have been published recently, and I am happy to be co-author of one of them. In Hoffmann et al. 2012 we report on our observations along the NE Omani coast between Fins and Sur. We found a ridge of imbricated boulders parallel to the coast, but in heights of several meters above m.s.l. on top of a cliff and dozens of meters inland. Also, extremely large blocks clearly stemming from the cliff were found. We used LiDAR to determine the mass of very large blocks (up to 40 t) and found this method to result in far lower weights than estimated with the classical method. more