Normal life has come to a halt, but publishing papers apparently not. Here’s a lot of stuff to read at home: nice remote sensing studies, very cool field observations (good old days), an entire trilogy by Dirk Scherler and Wolfgang Schwanghart on drainage divides, and much more. Enjoy reading, tell me if I’ve missed something, and stay safe.

Since we are all (?) sitting at home and waiting for the situation to improve, this may be a good chance to catch up with the latest literature. Alas, new papers are published without mercy every month, and March was no different. Here are the latest ones on paleoseismology., active tectonics, and large earthquakes. Stay safe!

During January 13-17, in 2020, Hokudan 2020, an international symposium on active faulting, was held in Awaji City, Japan, in order to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Kobe earthquake. Along with recent progress in active fault research, we discussed earthquake outreach just in front of the surface rupture of the earthquake. Here I want to share some stories behind the fault preservation museum in the earthquake memorial park and some ideas about what we can do to improve earthquake awareness.

Since I can’t go to the field right now, I am stuck with analyzing the amazing LiDAR data from Slovenia. We have 1 m resolution data covering the entire country and oh my god it’s great for active tectonics research. But how do you actually make a DEM from the data? Here’s a quick guide using free software only.

OK, this is a bit off-topic, but I was asked to write a short tutorial about how to make the flow map that I posted on Twitter. Why did I actually make it? Usually I am interested in faults and earthquakes, but sometimes secondary earthquake effects such as landslides can help us to find out about seismic activity. Since my next project will be about the Alps, I am currently looking a bit into landslides, too. The map shows a large landslide close to Jena, the Dohlenstein. This slide was activated several times in the past 300 years or so, but now seems to be stable. Behind the head scarp there is a small depression. I was wondering if this is perhaps just (paleo-)drainage, or if it could be the first hint for a new sliding plane and a larger future landslide. That’s why I made the flow map – if the depression has no outflow, it’s more likely to be related to newly forming tension cracks.

This is a wonderful PostDoc position with Lucilla Benedetti at CEREGE. 2 yrs duration, field work in Italy, open until filled:

The latest paper round-up comes with interesting studies on the Mediterranean and on tsunamis (and tsunamis in the Mediterranean…), as well as cool stuff from Australia, New Zealand, the US, and Asia. Enjoy reading!

In my DFG-financed project “Earth surface response to Quaternary faulting and shallow crustal structure in the eastern Adria-Alpine collision zone and the Friulian plain” I investigate the active faults of NE Italy and western Slovenia. This project is part of the Priority Programme SPP2017 “Mountain Building Processes in 4D“. We’ve now published a paper on the activity of the Udine-Buttrio thrust fault. The paper is open access and available here.

While working on my project on distributed faulting, I dig into the literature looking for additional case studies beside those contained in the SURE (SUrface Ruptures due to Earthquakes) database.

I retrieved information on 18 normal and strike-slip events occurred between 1905 and 2011, with a magnitude range of Mw 5.9 – 8.3. I digitized rupture traces from published maps at a variable scale, dependent on the resolution of the original map. Earthquakes are from Iran (7 events), Mongolia, China, Turkey, Greece (2 events for each country), Italy, Kenya and Japan (1 event).

Dear colleagues,

Please make sure to register for the 2020 PATA Days in Chile before 28 February here: https://www.patadayschile.cl

You can also book your hotels here and submit the short abstracts. There’s only a limited number of places due to the remote venue in a wonderful resort hotel – first come, first served. The PATA Days (Paleoseismology, Active Tectonics, Archaeoseismology) is the largest int’l meeting for the paleoseismology community and supported by INQUA. In Chile, a lot of tsunami science will of course also happen.