Author: György Hetényi

An unusual earthquake swarm is ongoing since Tuesday morning, beneath the south flank of Mount Wildhorn and towards the West to Sanetschpass, in the canton of Valais. It is unusual as more than a dozen of felt events have been recorded so far in just two days, amongst over 150 in total. However, the Gutenberg-Richter b-value of the swarm seems to be a common value.

Below is a time evolution figure of the earthquakes and their magnitudes. The released energy overall is equivalent to a magnitude 3.6 earthquake so far. The swarm cannot be considered to be finished as of now. Updates will follow on the SED website as well as here.

The 14th workshop of the International Lithosphere Program‘s Task Force “Sedimentary Basins” takes place in Hévíz, Hungary, from October 15th to 19th. The conference is dedicated to the memory of Frank Horváth, world famous researcher of the Pannonian Basin, who deceased in 2018. For detailed information, please visit the workshop website.

The University of Pavia and a number of collaborating institutions are hosting an international school on the Structure and Composition of the Lower Continental Crust this week. The agenda and the poster abstract book are online; photos and presented slides may come online later.

Our Tectonophysics paper on the “Source mechanism of a lower crust earthquake beneath the Himalayas and its possible relation to metamorphism” is now online, with a FREELY downloadable version until November 12th HERE.

L’exposition inAlpe de l’Université de Lausanne vise à disséminer la culture scientifique dans les Alpes vaudoises. Une partie de l’exposition est installée le long des sentiers de randonnées, et accessible par un code QR dans l’application gratuite Cultural Network.

Une thématique traite les tremblements de terre dans les Alpes vaudoises. Vous pouvez la trouver au panneau 6 près de Leysin (co-ordonnées 567703, 133819), ou en scannant le code QR ci-dessous (et puis, dans une représentation moins jolie, ici).

A 2-year post-doc position is now available in our group, focusing on seismicity and its interpretation deep beneath the Himalayas. The advertisement can be read online and downloaded from here.

Following the successful educational workshop in Pokhara in April,  Paul Denton shares his local experience in a lively article on Geoblogy.

In its fourth year, project OROG3NY was evaluated, together with a proposal to extend it for further two years.

The Swiss National Science Foundation has recently brought a favourable decision, which means that the project is granted to continue running in 2020-2021. This is great news and we look forward to the forthcoming project activities!

Two papers from our group have been accepted for publication this month:

• With the lead of Celso Alvizuri, the results on the “Source mechanism of a lower crust earthquake beneath the Himalayas and its possible relation to metamorphism” will soon appear in Tectonophyics.
• In a cooperation with the Observatory in Hungary, “Moho depth analysis of the eastern Pannonian Basin and the Southern Carpathians from receiver functions” is in press at Journal of Seismology.

On May 28th a M4.2 earthquake occurred beneath the Dent d’Oche, a well known-peak on the French side of Lake Geneva, close to the Swiss border. The event was felt around Lake Geneva, as well as in the Valais where our station clearly recorded the waveforms (see below).

This earthquake is of interest for several reasons. In the year 563, a tsunami on Lake Geneva was generated from a rock fall in the same area. In 1584, a M5.9 earthquake occured in the same region (Aigle +/-50 km). Finally, the geothermal project planned in Lavey-les-Bains is close enough for this event to be of interest when assessing background seismicity.