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
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A paleoseismicity-spy and desert geologist in Alaska
2014-05-05 | in Earthquake, Meeting, Tsunami -
Doggerland likely to have vanished due to the Storegga tsunami 8 ka ago
“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
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A reviewed tsunami database for Australia
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Tsunami hazard in Israel
2014-05-02 | in Earthquake, TsunamiA lot of interesting stories on earthquakes, tsunamis and paleoseismology made it to the media last week – no wonder as the EGU2014 and the SSA meeting took place at the same time. I will try to catch up and I start with tsunami hazard in Israel:
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New papers on tsunamis, archeoseismology, paleoseismology, seismic hazard
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USGS report about the SAFRR Tsunami Scenario – EQ in Alaska triggers tsunami that hits California
2014-02-23 | in EarthquakeOn 27 March, 1964, an earthquake of magnitude 9.2 occurred offshore Alaska (Plafker, 1965) and caused a Pacific-wide tsunami. This quake was the second most powerful that was ever recorded and is also referred to as the Great Alaska Earthquake. The USGS has now released a report on a comparable tsunami scenario. The SAFRR (Science Application for Risk Reduction) Tsunami Scenario deals with a tsunami caused by a major quake off Alaska and investigates the possible impact at the coast of California. more
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4-year postdoctoral research position in coastal paleoseismology
2014-01-20 | in JobsThe 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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New Special Issue on Paleotsunamis in Annals of Geomorphology
2014-01-19 | in Paper, UncategorizedAnnals of Geomorphology has now published a new volume on Paleotsunamis in its Supplementary Issues. Issue 57 (4) is all about Reconstructing and modeling palaeotsunami events by multi-proxy geoscientific analyses. The volume is an outcome of the 2011 Corinth conference and edited by Andreas Vött, Klaus Reicherter and Ioannis Papanikolaou. I especially like it not only because I’ve organized the conference, but also because I am familiar with some of the study sites. Finally, I am co-author of the last paper. more
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New Tsunami book “Tsunami Events and Lessons Learned – Environmental and Societal Significance”
2013-11-29 | in PaperWitold pointed me to a new book on tsunamis that was published by Springer. It’s called Tsunami Events and Lessons Learned – Environmental and Societal Significance and it is edited by Y.A. Kontar, V. Santiago-Fandiño and T. Takahashi. The book contains 25 papers on the following topics: more
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New earthquake and paleoseismology papers in SRL, J Struc Geol
2013-09-05 | in PaperThe latest issue of the Seismological Research Letters (SRL) has at least three papers dealing with topics interesting for paleoseismologists.
Hinzen et al. studied the rotation of objects (e.g., monuments) during the L’Aquila earthquake of 2009. They scanned the rotated objects with a high-res laser scanner, built discrete-element-models from the data and simulated the shaking necessary to cause the deformation. The results help to better estimate earthquake parameters from earthquake archaeological effects (EAEs).