14th Swiss Geoscience Meeting coming up

We will be at the 14th Swiss Geoscience Meeting on November 18-19 in Geneva.

All of us will have posters on Saturday:

  • Colavitti L, Hetényi G: 3-D shear-wave velocity model of the Central Alps using converted waves
  • Chanard K, Hetényi G, Baumgartner L, Licul A, Herman F: Constraints on the extent and kinetics of eclogitization processes in the Indian lower crust
  • Hetényi G, Le Roux-Mallouf R, Berthet T, Cattin R, Cauzzi C, Phuntsho K, Grolimund R: Mind the (seismic) gap: the 1714 Bhutan earthquake

Historical Bhutan earthquake in 1714

With the help of several historical documents as well as two geological sites studied with paleoseismological methods, we could constrain a hitherto unclear earthquake in the Himalaya. The results reveal that the 1714 earthquake occurred in Bhutan, and that it was a major event with a magnitude of 7.5-8.5. For details see our paper published in Geophysical Research Letters here.

Outreach: AGU, ScienceFGSE, Kuensel and Planeterde, followed by other portals.

Sofia Kufner visiting

Sofia Kufner, a postdoctoral research scientist at the GFZ Potsdam will be visiting us on 24-25th October. She will give the ISTE seminar on Deep India meets deep Asia: a seismological view of lithospheric slab interaction under Hindu Kush and Pamir, on Monday 24th at 17:15 in Géopolis-1620. Everyone interested in deep earthquakes, complex 3D geodynamics, seismology (and more) are welcome!

New publication on gravity and large earthquakes in the Himalaya

It took exactly ten years from the first discussion to the publication of the paper: our gravity projects in Nepal and Bhutan.

With about 80’000 person•kilometers travelled on crooked mountain roads, we could cover the Himalayas with sufficient gravity points to carry out an analysis of lateral, along-arc variations. These reveal segmentation of the India plate, which large earthquakes’ rupture extent seem to respect.

To read the full story, access our newest paper in Scientific Reports here.

Media appearance: UNIL, FGSE and its Géoblog.

Jean-Arthur Olive is visiting !

Jean-Arthur Olive, a postdoctoral research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (Columbia University) will be visiting our group from on September 5 to 9th September 2016, and available for discussion in Géopolis-3639!

His research investigates the thermo-mechanical evolution of tectonic plate boundaries by means of computational and analytical modeling.

Check out his Seminar on The role of surface processes in stabilizing half-graben structures, Wednesday, September, 7th at 3:00pm, in Géopolis-2214 !

Interview on RTS

The M6.2 Norcia (Italy) earthquake that occurred on August 24th has received quite a bit of media attention. You can find local reports and photos, risk analyses and many related news on nearly all platforms. The day after the event RTS has called György Hetényi for a short interview about progress in earthquake “forecasting” – you can listen to it here.

School on Seismology beyond the textbooks and General Assembly of the European Seismological Commission

Leonardo Colavitti will participate to an Advanced School on “Seismology beyond textbooks” organised by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) from August 29th to September 3rd in Miramare, Trieste, Italy. At this link are the program details of the School.

The week after he will be at the 35th General Assembly of the European Seismological Commission (ESC) that will be held from 4th to 11th September 2016 in Trieste, Italy (The website of the conference is here).

On Tuesday September 6 at 12:15 p.m., Leonardo will be talking about Local earthquake tomography in the junction between Southeastern Alps and Dinarides using the seismic data of the CE3RN. Here you can find the abstract of  the planned talk.

Visit to the CPPS

The CPPS (“Centre Pédagogique pour la Prévention des Séismes”) is a newly developed educational centre to learn about earthquakes, seismic hazard and related topics, hosted by the HES-SO in Sion. It will be open to the public in the Autumn, and during the preparation phase we (a group of 13 colleagues from UNIL-ISTE) had the opportunity to visit and test the exhibit, including the earthquake simulator! It was a great experience. For more details on the CPPS: http://www.cpps-vs.ch/fr-fr/

Photo from the CPPS website

Prize for Leonardo Colavitti

Congratulations to Leonardo Colavitti who was awarded the “Irene Galante” prize by the University of Trieste for his master thesis! This prize is awarded to students who have carried out their research at the Department of Mathematics and Geosciences. The thesis title is “Tomografia crostale delle Alpi Sud-Orientali: dalla localizzazione sismica al modello Geologico-Strutturale”, supervised by Drs. Costa, Tiberi and Böhm.