The occurrence of gas hydrate in shallow marine sediments causes an increase of seismic velocity compared to that of water saturated host sediments. This increase of velocity depends on the spatial distribution of hydrates in pore spaces of sediments. Velocities derived from seismic data are low frequency effective values, which cannot be uniquely related to high frequency variation in the rock…

Several large earthquakes in the Hellenic subduction zone have been documented in historical records from around the eastern Mediterranean, but the relative seismic quiescence of the region over the period of instrumental observation means that the exact locations of these earthquakes and their tectonic significance are not known.We present AMS radiocarbon dates from uplifted late Holocene pal�…

This study presents P- and S-wave velocity variations for the upper mantle in southern Scandinavia and northern Germany based on teleseismic traveltime tomography. Tectonically, this region includes the entire northern part of the prominent Tornquist Zone which follows along the transition from old Precambrian shield units to the east to younger Phanerozoic deep sedimentary basins to the south…

The space–time Epidemic-Type Aftershock Sequence (ETAS) model is extended by incorporating the depth component of earthquake hypocentres. The depths of the direct offspring produced by an earthquake are assumed to be independent of the epicentre locations and to follow a beta distribution, whose shape parameter is determined by the depth of the parent event. This new model is verified by appl…

On 2012 August 11, a pair of large, damaging earthquakes struck the Varzaghan–Ahar region in northwest Iran, in a region where there was no major mapped fault or any well-documented historical seismicity. To investigate the active tectonics of the source region we applied a combination of seismological methods (local aftershock network, calibrated multiple event relocation and focal mechanism…

The intra-plate deformation of the Upper Rhine Graben (URG) located in Central Europe is investigated using geodetic measurement techniques. We present a new approach to calculate a combined velocity field from InSAR, levelling and GNSS measurements. As the expected tectonic movements in the URG area are small (less than 1mma−1), the best possible solutions for linear velocity rates from …

The Piton de la Fournaise basaltic volcano, on La R´eunion Island in the western Indian Ocean, is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. This volcano is classically considered as the surface expression of an upwelling mantle plume and its activity is continuously monitored, providing detailed information on its superficial dynamics and on the edifice structure. Deeper crustal and uppe…

Magnetic minerals acquire a remanent magnetization when cooled or warmed in an applied field H through a phase transition. This paper reports the first observations of transition cooling and warming remanent magnetizations (TrCRM and TrWRM) in pyrrhotite (Fe7S8) and hematite (αFe2O3), with phase transitions at 32 K (Besnus transition) and 250 K (Morin transition). TrWRM was produced by wa…

Reconstructions of the history of convergence between the Nubia and Eurasia plates constitute an important part of a broader framework for understanding deformation in the Mediterranean region and the closing of the Mediterranean Basin. Herein, we combine high-resolution reconstructions of Eurasia-North America and Nubia-North America Plate motions to determine rotations that describe Nubia-Eur…

Mainland Portugal, on the southwestern edge of the European continent, is located directly north of the boundary between the Eurasian and Nubian plates. It lies in a region of slow lithospheric deformation (<5 mm yr−1), which has generated some of the largest earthquakes in Europe, both intraplate (mainland) and interplate (offshore). Some offshore earthquakes are nucleated on old and col…