In a week of recording at our test site in the Valais, all 4 earthquakes located by the Swiss Seismological Service were clearly visible and detected. This includes a magnitude 1.0 event at 36 km distance, which is a surprisingly good performance: the energy liberated by a magnitude 1.0 earthquake corresponds to approximately 1 cm slip on a 125 m2 area.
Below is the detected waveform, with the origin time (OT), P and S waves.
On Wednesday April 3rd, Luca dal Zilio from the California Institute of Technology will visit our institute. At the lunchtime Table Ronde he will present a seminar with the following title: Anatomy of the Main Himalayan Thrust: Implications for elastic energy storage and lateral segmentation.
Thanks to good contacts, a RaspberryShake-1D sensor could be installed today at a low-noise location in the Valais. This region is known to be that of highest seismic activity in Switzerland, with recurrent damaging events. The latest of the major events occurred in 1946 in Sierre, and had a magnitude of 5.8. The data recorded by the station installed today can be seen online here.
On Tuesday March 19th, Jean-Philippe Avouac from the California Institute of Technology will visit the Faculty of Geosciences and Environment. He will present a seminar at 12h15 in room 1620 on Silent uplift, monsoonal swing and millenary quakes in the Himalaya.
The AlpArray Surface Wave, Ambient Noise and Full Waveform Inversion research group will hold its next meeting on Thursday and Friday, February 21-22 in Lyon, France. Beyond research progress reports within the group, presentations from other groups (such as the Receiver Function group) will take place, as well as discussion on joint inversion.
There were 3 earthquakes near Manipur (India), with magnitudes 4.6-4.7 each, within a 55-hour timespan and ca. 70 km distance, according to the USGS catalogue. The focal depths were between 55 and 68 km. Although this segment of the India-Burma subduction is known to be seismically active, this is a relatively rapid succession of light events.
On Monday January 14th, Laura Airaghi from the Institut des Sciences de la Terre de Paris will visit ISTE. She will present a seminar on Linking microstructures to petro-chronology in low-grade metamorphic rocks: an approach to investigate large-scale deformation mechanisms in collisional settings (eastern Tibet and Pyrenees) at 11h00 in room 2121.
Today Bjarne Almqvist from Uppsala University is visiting ISTE. In the afternoon he will present a seminar on Collisional Orogeny in the Scandinavian Caledonides (COSC) Project: Investigating mountain building through scientific drilling at the usual time and place.
The School seismology project in Nepal has recently featured in the Raspberry Shake news. You can read the full story on their website.
The whole group is contributing to the 16th Swiss Geoscience Meeting in Bern, with one poster per person, in sessions 1, 7 an 16. Check the meeting program here.