GeoLog

Gorkha earthquake

How extreme events impact Earth’s surface: reports from the 6th EGU Galileo conference

How extreme events impact Earth’s surface: reports from the 6th EGU Galileo conference

Throughout the year, EGU hosts a number of meetings, workshops, and conferences for the geoscience community. While the EGU’s annual General Assembly brings more than 15,000 scientists together under one roof, the EGU Galileo Conferences allows a smaller number of scientists to discuss and debate issues at the forefront of their discipline. In this blog post, the organisers of the 6th Galileo Conf ...[Read More]

Geosciences Column: Extreme snowfall potentially worsened Nepal’s 2015 earthquake-triggered avalanche

Geosciences Column: Extreme snowfall potentially worsened Nepal’s 2015 earthquake-triggered avalanche

Three years ago, an earthquake-induced avalanche and rockfalls buried an entire Nepalese village in ice, stone, and snow. Researchers now think the region’s heavy snowfall from the preceding winter may have intensified the avalanche’s disastrous effect. The Langtang village, just 70 kilometres from Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, is nestled within a valley under the shadow of the Himalayas. The town wa ...[Read More]

When mountains collapse…

When mountains collapse…

Jane Qiu, a grantee of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, took to quake-stricken Nepal last month — venturing into landslide-riddled terrains and shadowing scientists studying what makes slopes more susceptible to failure after an earthquake. The journey proved to be more perilous than she had expected. What would it be like to lose all your family overnight? And how would you cope? It’s wit ...[Read More]

Geosciences Column: An international effort to understand the hazard risk posed by Nepal’s 2015 Gorkha earthquake

Geosciences Column: An international effort to understand the hazard risk posed by Nepal’s 2015 Gorkha earthquake

Nine months ago the ground in Nepal shook, and it shook hard: on April 25th 2015 the M7.8 Gorkha earthquake struck and was followed by some 250 aftershocks, five of which were greater than M 6.0. The devastation left behind in the aftermath of such an event, and how to coordinate disaster-relief efforts in a vast, mountainous region, is difficult to imagine. Yet, this December at the 2015 AGU Fall ...[Read More]