Tectonics and Structural Geology

Geomythology. The Sicilian Trilogy – Part III: The Cyclopes, the Skeletons, and the Dwarfs Elephants

Filippo Carboni July 29, 2022

Odysseus in the Cave of Polyphemus, by Jacob Jordaens in 1635, Pushkin Museum, Moscow, Russia.

“Strangers, who are you? Where do sail from? Are you traders, or do you sail the as rovers, with your hands against every man, and every man’s hand against you?” … “Stranger, you are a fool, or else you know nothing of this country. Talk to me, indeed, about fearing the gods or shunning their anger? We Cyclopes do not care about Jove or any of your blessed gods, for we are ever so much ...[Read More]

TS Must-Read – Yin and Harrison (2000) Geologic evolution of the Himalaya-Tibetan Orogen

Gianluca Frasca and The Must-read team July 22, 2022

Yin and Harrison (2000) puts together an exhaustive review of three decades of geological and geophysical investigations on the Himalayan-Tibetan orogen. This research supports the orogenesis started during the Cenozoic between 70 and 50 Ma ago as a consequence of the Indo-Asian collision following the closure of the Tethys ocean between Laurasia and Gondwana. Yin and Harrison (2000) underlines th ...[Read More]

Geomythology. The Sicilian Trilogy – Part II: Vulcano, Vulcan’s forge

Filippo Carboni June 3, 2022

The Island of Vulcano. The eruption of 1888-1890. November 23, 1888. (From Piccione, 2012)

Why is a fork actually called fork? And why are volcanoes actually called volcanoes? While I do not have any reply for the first question, I have one for the second… and with a quite interesting story. The Earth currently has around 1350 potentially active volcanoes, aside from the volcanoes along the spreading centres (USGS faq); all of them are named after a single volcano, called Vulcano. Vulca ...[Read More]

The ECS TS team, and their activities between GAs

Hannah Davies May 30, 2022

Flags at EGU GA (credit imaggeo.egu.eu)

As member of the EGU Tectonics and Structural Geology (TS) Early Career Scientist (ECS) Representative team, and with the outlook of the first hybrid EGU General Assembly (GA), I take the opportunity to highlight some of the activities and news of the ECS TS team. The ECS TS team has been very active all year round between last year’s #vEGU21 and the upcoming #EGU22 General Assembly. The activitie ...[Read More]

Features from the Field: Dikes and Sills

Samuele Papeschi and Hannah Davies May 30, 2022

Dikes and sills intruding Dalradian quartzites, Donegal, Ireland. Photo © Prof. Alan Cooper (University of Otago).

Volcanoes are everywhere along plate margins and on hot spots on the planet’s surface. Just in the past 2 years, we have witnessed enormous explosive eruptions such as that of the Hunga Tonga volcano which released an amount of energy equivalent to hundreds of atomic bombs, and massive lava flows, as at the Cumbre Vieja at La Palma, which was estimated to have a total volume of 80 million cubic me ...[Read More]

TS Must-Read – Brun (1999): Narrow rifts versus wide rifts: inferences for the mechanics of rifting from laboratory experiments

The Must-read team May 4, 2022

In 1999 Jean-Pierre Brun published his Must-Read paper about rifting, in which he reviews fifteen years of laboratory experiments at Geosciences Rennes. In a brief introduction the paper reminds the reader of the two main rift types: narrow rifting as the preceding stage for continental break-up, and wide rifting that occurs after cessation of convergence. The article introduces some key differenc ...[Read More]

TS Must Read – Scholz (1998): Earthquakes and friction laws

The Must-read team April 25, 2022

Scholz (1998) is the “must-read” review article about rate- and state- variable laws of rock friction. The article is a robust introduction to the state-of-the art of the discipline at the end of the past century and should be considered of particular interest for students and/or early career scientists. In spite of its relative simplicity, rock mechanics unfortunately is still not taught universa ...[Read More]

Features from the Field: Snow illuminates fault zones

Afroz Shah April 8, 2022

A fault zone illuminated by light snow cover in the Himalayan orogenic belt.

This guest post was contributed by Afroz Shah who is an Assistant Professor of Structural Geology at the Department of Geosciences, Universiti of Brunei Darussalam (UBD). He has completed Ph.D at James Cook University, Australia in 2010, post-doctorate at Earth Observatory of Singapore in 2013 and joined the first academic job as a Senior Lecture of Structural Geology at Curtin Sarawak, Miri, Mala ...[Read More]

TS Must-Read – Cowie (1998) A healing-reloading feedback control on the growth rate of seismogenic faults

The Must-read team April 4, 2022

This study provides a simple numerical model of fault rupture that describes the development of fault systems from the initial nucleation of numerous small faults to the localisation of deformation into few major faults. The model presented is based on two main considerations: first, earthquakes cause stress changes that can either advance or delay failure on neighbouring faults. Second, for failu ...[Read More]

Geomythology. The Sicilian Trilogy – Part I: Persephone on the endorheic Pergusa lake

Filippo Carboni March 18, 2022

Pergusa lake with Mt. Etna in the background. (from Achille Drago, via Wikimedia Commons).

If, in 2022, you still think that seasons depend on the Earth’s rotation around its tilted axis and around the Sun… you are surely right. However, in ancient times, the Greeks, and the Romans afterwards, thought it was due to an agreement between Zeus and Hades, to save Persephone from the Underworld. The sick love of Gods Persephone, daughter of Demeter, the Goddess of harvest and agricultu ...[Read More]