Tectonics and Structural Geology

Where earthquake faults reach the ground surface: insight from 2016 Kumamoto event

Yuto Sasaki October 2, 2025

Futagawa fault cutting across a road. Picture taken shortly after the earthquake in 2016 (Kumamoto Earthquake Memorial Museum KIOKU, 2025)

What does a seismogenic fault look like? We can sometimes observe surface earthquake faults, which propagate ruptures from the hypocenter to the ground surface. In 2016, intense seismicity was observed during the Kumamoto earthquake sequence in Japan. This sequence consisted of many shallow earthquakes, including a strong foreshock and the subsequent mainshock with numerous aftershocks. The earthq ...[Read More]

Geomythology. True Science and/or Strong Communication Medium ?!

Filippo Carboni September 26, 2025

World maps obtained from Google Earth Pro Desktop

Geomythology is a relatively recent term, coined by Dorothy B. Vitaliano in 1966. It represented the birth of what will become a new multidisciplinary approach, aimed not only at explaining the geological meaning of natural phenomenon behind long-told folklore (myths and legends), but also at bridging the communication gap between scientists and non-scientists (Vitaliano, 1973). Geomythology estab ...[Read More]

Throwback Summer – retracing student steps at the Pic Saint-Loup, France

Lauretta Kaerger September 18, 2025

The Pic Saint-Loup, Occitania, France (Credit: Lauretta Kaerger)

The region around the Pic Saint-Loup is a popular destination for many European universities to teach mapping field courses – and there is a reason for it, even besides the great landscape, good food and nice weather. Let’s take a tour to discover why! The Pic Saint-Loup itself is indeed so impressive that some former students return at later stages in life “dragging” along other geologists ...[Read More]

TS Must-Read – Fossen and Cavalcante (2017): Shear zones – A review

The Must-read team September 4, 2025

Haakon Fossen and Geane Carolina G. Cavalcante published their seminal review on the topic of shear zones in 2017 in the journal Earth-Science Reviews. The work summarizes the scientific findings on the development and quantification of ductile shear zones sincefrom the the 1960s up to recently. It describes the fundamental aspects of the initiation and growth of shear zones across scales. First, ...[Read More]

Introducing the blog team 2025-2026

Pauline Gayrin September 1, 2025

Pictures portraits of the 12 editors of the TS blog

TS editorial team 2025-2026

For many of you September means back to school, for us September means the return of the blog. Behind the scene this summer, the bright new editorial team prepared fresh blog posts to share with the community. We are very excited to welcome the new editors, happy to start their blog adventure. The 2025-2026 team is a group of early career scientists editors from diverse backgrounds, continents and ...[Read More]

Queer Quarterly: What does queer visibility mean in academia?

Queer Quarterly April 16, 2025

Queer Quarterly logo, designed by Lea Pennac

Queer Quarterly is the blog series of the EGU pride group, a LGBTQIA+ team of geoscientists engaged to uphold and improve the rights of the community in the EGU organization. This week’s post is dedicated to allyship: how people outside of the community can support our efforts. The term LGBTQIA+ is the abbreviation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual. The addition ...[Read More]

TS Must-Read – Rowe and Griffith (2015) Do faults preserve a record of seismic slip: A second opinion

The Must-read team April 1, 2025

Earthquakes shake the Earth almost every day, but what exactly happens within rocks during these seismic events is a matter of debate in the scientific community. The article “Do faults preserve a record of seismic slip: A second opinion,” published in 2015, offers a thoughtful review of the sure and potential records of seismic slip in rocks. The paper examines the notion that rocks i ...[Read More]

Geomythology. Crater Lake: from Love, War and/or natural phenomena

Filippo Carboni February 28, 2025

Crater Lake from Watchman Overlook. From Athleticamps through Wikimedia Commons.

The worldwide relatively frequent recurrence of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis, as well as their strong impact on society make them the most common sources of myths. The most intriguing part is how different cultures describe relatively similar events in very different ways. Among them, the myths at the base of the origins of the Crater Lake in Oregon (USA), mainly orally inherited f ...[Read More]

TS Must Read – 3D seismic analysis of the structure and evolution of a salt-influenced normal fault zone: a test of competing fault growth models, Jackson & Rotevatn (2013)

The Must-read team September 23, 2024

In this Must Read paper “3D seismic analysis of the structure and evolution of a salt-influenced normal fault zone: a test of competing fault growth models (2013)”, by Christopher A-L. Jackson and Atle Rotevatn used detailed 3D seismic reflection data from the Suez Rift, Egypt, to gain a better understanding of the structural evolution of normal faults. Specifically, the paper shows th ...[Read More]

Geology Bites: Podcast conversations about geology with researchers making key contributions to our understanding of the Earth and the Solar System

Hannah Davies September 2, 2024

As readers of this blog know, geology is an awe-inspiring subject, dealing as it does with immensely powerful forces operating on time scales, pressures, and temperatures we can barely fathom. It is geological processes that are responsible for the continents, oceans, mountain ranges, indeed for all the landscapes we see around us. Even though many of these processes operate over deep time and dee ...[Read More]