Read the blog of Richard Styron to find out more: http://rocksandwater.net/

The project start page with the different data formats

It’s relatively easy to start, most data formats are self-explaining and it is no big job to add information once the document is set up and the first entries are made. As a result you can create fault maps like this:

This GoogleEarth example shows normal and thrust faults mapped in the Himalaya region (red lines)

This is an amazing idea and may be seen as a pilot for more crowd-based mapping projects. Plus, it’s also great for teaching purposes.

[When I first tried to get the Himalaya date as kml-files by right-click-->save target as... I encountered a problem trying to open the file with GoogleEarth. Then, just copy the code, paste in the editor and save the file as a *.kml and it works without any problems.]

The Himalaya-Tibet Map: https://github.com/HimaTibetMap/HimaTibetMap

The Andes Map: https://github.com/ActiveTectonicsAndes/ATA

As you can see on Jack’s sketch, the snake had chosen the highest part (~4 m) for its journey:

The snake’s path

Bullsnakes are not really rare in this region and they’re just big, but not poisonous. The trench  belongs to Jim McCalpin who trains geologists in the fine art of trenching past earthquakes, see http://www.geohaz.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22&Itemid=23.

So, be carefull when you go back to your trench! I also have some experience with snakes in the field.

A gopher snake in Utah:

A rattle snake in the Canyonlands NP, Utah:

A viper in Morocco

A snake in Sparta, Greece

A snake in Baelo Claudia, Spain

In case you should not be fully convinced for some strange reason, check out the 2011 Corinth conference, too:

Here you can see my talk on Web2.0 and earthquake geology that I held in Mexico:

Shaky Ground by Sharon Kae Reamer

Terrae Motus Books

English

434 pages

ISBN 978-147938946

Available on Amazon and for Kindle.

Note that the digital one is free from 05-09 June!

the registration for the PATA-Days is now online at pata-days.org. We used the acronym now to avoid the long title (4th International INQUA Meeting on Paleoseismology, Active Tectonics and Archeoseismology, 9-15 October, Aachen, Germany) and to do a favour to our Spanish friends…

Please find all information at the new website, including the abstract template.

The deadline for registration and abstract submission is 15 July.

The first two days of the meeting will take place in Aachen. We will welcome you with an icebreaker party on 9 October and leave for an excursion to the Lower Rhine Embayment area on active faults and archeoseismology on 10 October. We ask you to book your own hotel in Aachen according to your travel plans and budget. I prepared a list with some recommendations at the end of this post.

The scientific session will take place from 11-13 October at the AKNZ in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler. The AKNZ is the German Academy for Crisis Management, Emergency Planning and Civil Protection. There will be a bus transfer to the AKNZ on 11 October and back on 13 October. We organized accommodation there in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler.

The third part of the meeting will be held in Simmerath. The beautiful hotel “Paulushof” is located directly at the Rursee. It is the perfect location for fruitful discussions, project planning, hiking, relaxing or joining the excursion to Aachen (Archeoseismology and World Heritage site Aachen Cathedral) on 14 October.

If you still wonder if you should come to the PATA-days meeting, have a look what the meeting in Corinth2011 was like (I know, a problem with the sound…):

Accommodation in Aachen

• Aachen Youth Hostel (single room from 25.80 EUR)
• IBIS Aachen city (single room from 47 EUR)
• IBIS Hauptbahnhof (single room from 49 EUR)
• IBIS Marschiertor (single room from 66 EUR)
• Baccara (single room from 75 EUR)
• Aquis Grana (single room from 100 EUR)
• Domicil (Apartments, garden houses, studios – not cheap if you come alone, but good if you share an apartment or come with your family)
• Quellenhof (single room from 130 EUR)

or check HRS.com (booking website) or the Aachen tourist service.

The app Earthquake Geo Survey (1.0) has been released yesterday, 13 May 2013 on Google Play, Android’s app store. With only 1.9 MB this cost-free application is light-weight, and it can be installed on all Android versions 2.2 and up – recent smartphones run on Android 4ish.

The app has been designed based on the EEE form, proposed by the INQUA TERPRO Focus Area on Paleoseismology and Active Tectonics, for reporting earthquake-induced deformations and processing the collected data at the end of a post-earthquake reconnaissance field survey. As an outcome, the earthquake environmental effects can be documented and the macroseismic intensity will be evaluated based on the Environmental Seismic Intensity-2007 (ESI-07) scale. – the authors on Google Play.

This handy helper was developed and designed by George Papathanassiou (from the Earthquake Geology Research Team) and Vasilis Kopsachilis in the framework of the TERPRO INQUA Project 1299 EEE Metrics and will be presented during the next workshop in Aachen.

They also started an application website and blog here.

This is a nice but wet fault scarp!

After all, today was a good day! We had some rain, which caught me as a surprise because I thought I would have 30° and sunshine all the time, but from earlier campaigns I should have known that sunny Greece can be cold, windy and rainy, too. So, we all were completely washed. Plus, we met some nice creatures. I like some of them, but to be honest, I am not angry if spiders keep a security distance. So field work is not only fighting the macchia and getting to know all the spiny plants, it’s also trying to avoid spiders, ants, and other nice little friends.

Sascha is fighting his way through the macchia.

I like you if you keep 3 m distance.

You can keep 4 m distance, please.

No more Mr Nice Guy. This turtle toirtoise tortoise was resting right on the fault plane!

An ant highway on the fault plane!

An ant highway on the hanging wall.

An ant nest being situated right on the track of our topographic profile.

A bunch of caterpillars hiding from the rain.

The older brother of the fault plane turtle tortoise turtle.

This snail slug tries to climb the fault gauge.

Goat attack on our rental car.

If there are no animals waiting for tasty geologists, there will be some spiny plants for sure.

Who cares about spiny stuff and tiny animals when you can see such beautiful scarps?

A nice view to Avlonas. Note the fault scarp in the foreground.

A promising outcrop north of Athens. The first interpretation is that the reddish soils and colluvium to the right were downthrown relatively to the greenish rocks to the left by a fault that created that whitish fault gauge. Hopefully, we can date some paleosols here for getting an age of the event.

Also, this area is full of beautiful scarps and we will measure some topographic profiles across them and Sascha will try GPR to find out about possible sediment deformation in the hanging wall:

A beauty of a fault scarp north of Athens.

In Athens there have been damages caused by earthquakes repeatedly, but almost always from relatively remote events. Few significant earthquakes in the immediate vicinity of Athens are known in historical times (Ambraseys & Psycharis, 2012), but the landscape around the city is clearly a seismic landscape in terms of Michetti et al. 2005. This is a good reason to check the faults in the surroundings for their activity.

Roadcut outcrop of the Kalamos Fault

References:

Ambraseys, N., Psycharis, I. N. 2012. Assessment of the long-term seismicity of Athens from two classical columns. Bull Earthquake Eng 10, 1635–1666.

Michetti, M. A., Audemard, F. A., Marco, S. 2005. Future trends in paleoseismology: Integrated study of the seismic landscape as a vital tool in seismic hazard analyses. Tectonophysics 408, 3-21.

A new issue of SRL has also been published, and there are some nice articles on seismic hazard assessment. Also, the studies on the effects of the recent Virginia earthquake on a nearby nuclear power plant are interesting.

Felt reports (Data source: EMSC)

USGS data suggest a compressional focal mechanism. I thought orogeny in the Carpathian Mountains would have been finished in Tertiary early Neogene… The website http://www.seismology.hu provides more information on recent earthquakes in Hungary.

EMSC seismicity data illustrate that this area is not really known for its seismic activity:

Seismicity 1960-today. Source: EMSC

Seismic hazard in this region is among the lowest in the country, see http://www.seismology.hu/index.php/en/seismicity.

Seismic hazard in Hungary. Source: USGS

The Archive of Historic Earthquake Data (AHEAD) lists a magnitude 6 event on 15 October 1834 as strongest earthquake in historical times in E Hungary (intensities ~IX), and another event of magnitude 6.2 occurred in 1763 close to the Hungary-Slovakia border. In 1561, a moderate event rattled Budapest and in 1868 another moderate earthquake occurred near Eger.

So, although some strong historic events are known for Hungary, the area of yesterday’s earthquake wasn’t really thought to be active – no really important events happened there during the last 1000 years. Or maybe it’s only no events that we know of. Bad luck for the people that need to repair their houses now. Good luck there has been only minor damage…

References and further reading:

• Bodri, B., 1996. Thermal state, rheology and seismicity in the Pannonian Basin, Hungary. Journal of Geodynamics,  21 (4), 309-328.
• Bus, Z., Szeidovitz, G., Vaccari, F., 2000. Synthetic Seismogram Based Deterministic Seismic Zoning for the Hungarian Part of the Pannonian Basin.
  Pure Appl. Geophys. 157, 205-220.
• Szeidovitz, G., Surányi, G., Gribovszki, K., Bus, Z., Leél-Ossy, S., Varga, S., 2008.
  Estimation of an upper limit on prehistoric peak ground acceleration using the parameters of intact speleothems in Hungarian caves. J Seismol, 12, 21-33.
• Zsíros, T., 2006. Érmellék seismic source zone. Acta Geodaetica et Geophysica Hungarica 41 (2), 237-247.