This week’s Friday links are almost entirely earthquake related.
On James’ Empty Blog you can find some scary but interesting videos from the Japan tsunami area.
The 3rd INQUA-IGCP567 international workshop on paleoseismology and archeoseismology will take place in Mexico in November 2012. It’s the 100th anniversary of the Acambay Earthquake.
Georgia Tech published some info about a study on soil effects during the Tohoku earthquake and the implications on earthquake resistant building design. They report that “Analyzing data from multiple measurement stations, scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology found that the quake weakened subsurface materials by as much as 70 percent.” Bad news for engineers, I fear?
In GoogleEarth, you can vie
w a great visualization of the Tohoku tsunami wave heights. It’s still incredible what the earthquake and the tsunami did.
Some bad news come from Greece: Earth Magazine reports on the “immediate closure of the Institute of Geology and Mineral Exploration” due to the economical crisis. Let’s hope it’s a (bad) hoax.
Miguel de las Doblas from the Geoscience Institute of Madrid developed the theory that extensive water pumping might be one of the reasons for the Lorca aftershock sequence (link in Spanish).
Great news from western Germany! A new fault has been discovered on the occasion of Heijn‘s farewell party, may he be happy with his new job in the Netherlands. 
Obviously, it’s an active normal fault, long enough to produce surface ruptures.
NNE-SSW trending, dipping to the west.
The Heijn fault at the German-Netherlands border.
The last event must have happened recently since the fault scarp is well preserved. The Heijn Fault (as it was named after it’s discoverer) trends NNE-SSW, thus representing a completely new and formerly unknown fault pattern that doesn’t fit the observations made on the recent stress field in that region.
A late erosional stage.
The fault dips to the west, downthrowing the Netherlands as it strictly follows the German-Netherlands border (which is the next strange thing). Please also note the fresh slickensides and the undulating fault plane.
The hangingwall is subject to very fast erosion as it turned out shortly after the fault was discovered. It may be that the entire feature will be gone within days, even hours. This reminds me of the Accretionary Wedge #30 Bake Sale, which was a really great idea.
Finally, decide on your own how clever or brave this is: Risk your life for a lava sample!
Have a nice weekend!
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