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Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas, everybody. Have a joyful season and a happy, happy, happy new year! In case you’ve forgotten (over eating and drinking): Today is Friday and here are your links!

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Our latest paper on coastal change in Oman deals with an extreme flood event that was recorded in an archaeological site in Ras al Hadd, at the easternmost tip of the Arabian Peninsula. We found multiple evidence for tsunamis that hit Oman’s coast in the past. Close to Fins, mega-boulders were thrown on a cliff by huge waves. Fine-grained sediments typical for tsunami action were found in the same area. Searching for further evidence, we came across the archaeological site of HD6 in Ras al Hadd. The archaeologists who were excavating this site told us about strange findings in the archaeological record – they encountered a layer that interrupted the otherwise continuous stratigraphy of the settlement. The bronze age fishing village is located very close to the coast only a few meters above sea level, a large tsunami could easily impact here. more

A couple of new papers on paleoseismology and related fields have recently been published. They deal with active tectonics in China, coseismic uplift in Japan, seismites in Canada, turbidite and lake sediment paleoseismology, earthquake environmental effects in Greece, paleotsunami deposits in India, an earthquake and tsunami in 1531 in Lisbon, tsunamites in Malta, tectonic geomorphology, scaling relationships in the Med,  and the 2013 Balochistan earthquake and subsequent tsunami. If you miss recent studies here, drop us a mail. more

Several meetings on tsunamis will be held during the next months, make sure not to miss them. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. This event was not only one of the most deadly natural disasters that ever happened, but it also was a kind of wake-up call for tsunami science. It’s safe to say that it had an enormous impact on research funding and it is responsible for a huge increase in scientific tsunami literature. The meetings will be a good occasion to share your research. more

A good number of interesting papers has been published during the last months, related to active tectonics, paleoseismology and tsunami research. Study sites include Oman, Italy, New Zealand, California, Cascadia, Scotia Sea, and Central Asia. Enjoy reading and tell me, if you miss some publications here!

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Dear friends and colleagues,

The deadline for registration of the 5^th PATA-days meeting is extended to June 20, and for abstract submission to the end of June.  

See details on the official website: www.pata-days.org.

Please don’t miss the last chance to visit dynamic Korea!

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Today (2014-05-24) on 09:25 UTC an earthquake with magnitude M_W6.9 occurred in the NE Aegean Sea. The EMSC reports a depth of 27 km (USGS: 10 km). The quake had a (right-lateral) strike-slip mechanism and was felt as far away as Athens, Istanbul, and Sofia. More than 200 people were injured, most of them only lightly, and moderate damage to dozens of houses has been reported. The earthquake occurred on the (S)Western part of the North Anatolian Fault in the Samos Basin and was among the strongest events that have ever been recorded at that segment. more

The SSA 2014 conference in Anchorage, Alaska is over and so is the post-meeting excursion. Our friend and colleague Gösta was attending this field trip on the environmental effects of the Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964 and he sent us some nice images and a brief description of this trip. This is the second part of his report. more

The SSA2014 annual meeting took place in Anchorage, Alaska from 29 April – 2 May. Currently the post-meeting excursion on the effects of the Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964 is taking place, and we placed our paleoseismicity-spy Gösta Hoffmann in the group. We hope that no one realizes that he’s a desert geologist and absolutely in the wrong place, but he promised to not wear his Teva sandals in order not be identified. Gösta is Associate Professor at the German University of Technology in Oman (GUtech) and works on coastal change and tsunamis, and particularly on tsunamis in the Arabian Sea. Here is his report from Alaska: more

“Doggerland” refers to a drowned landscape located where the North Sea stretches today. Fishermen have found numerous archaeological artifacts when fishing between the coasts of UK and Denmark/Germany (more or less), which led to the idea that an ancient culture lived in this area when the sea level was lower some thousands of years ago. Archaeological studies and modelling confirmed this hypothesis (e.g., see Coles, 2000 or see this paper with a really cool title: White, 2006). Slowly rising sea levels and/or land subsidence forced our ancestors to move to higher grounds and to finally give up Doggerland at all around 8 ka ago. Jon Hill and his co-authors now added some more spice to this story. At the EGU they presented modelling data which imply that the Storegga tsunami over-ran the remaining islands, and that the end of Doggerland was sudden. more