scholarly journals Himalayan earthquakes: a review of historical seismicity and early 21st century slip potential

2019 ◽  
Vol 483 (1) ◽  
pp. 423-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Bilham

AbstractThis article summarizes recent advances in our knowledge of the past 1000 years of earthquakes in the Himalaya using geodetic, historical and seismological data, and identifies segments of the Himalaya that remain unruptured. The width of the Main Himalayan Thrust is quantified along the arc, together with estimates for the bounding coordinates of historical rupture zones, convergence rates, rupture propagation directions as constrained by felt intensities. The 2018 slip potential for fifteen segments of the Himalaya are evaluated and potential magnitudes assessed for future earthquakes should these segments fail in isolation or as contiguous ruptures. Ten of these fifteen segments are sufficiently mature currently to host a great earthquake (Mw ≥ 8). Fatal Himalayan earthquakes have in the past occurred mostly in the daylight hours. The death toll from a future nocturnal earthquake in the Himalaya could possibly exceed 100 000 due to increased populations and the vulnerability of present-day construction methods.

1995 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Bilham ◽  
Paul Bodin ◽  
Michael Jackson

A 500-800 km long segment of the Himalaya bordered by the rupture zones of the great Bihar, 1934, and Kangra, 1905, earthquakes has not experienced a great earthquake for at least 200 years, and perhaps for as long as 750 years. The observed rate of occurrence of earthquakes is evidently too low to accommodate lndo/Tibetanslip which must therefore be accommodated by creep or occasional great earthquakes. Creep processes do not appear to be sufficiently fast, at least in central Nepal, where levelling data in the last two decades, and GPS data in the past 3 years, have been interpreted to account for at most 7 mm/year, or 30% of the inferred ≈20 mm/yr convergence signal. The measurement of 19th century geodetic networks in northern India, which have hitherto been neglected, potentially provides an estimate the rate of accumulation of elastic strain in W. Nepal. In view of the possibly disastrous consequences to the many tens of millions inhabitants of northern India and Nepal who would be affected by a great earthquake, an intense effort to explore further the historic record and the geographic limits of historic and future rupture is desirable.


Author(s):  
Oleksandra Nikolova ◽  
Kateryna Vasylyna

: The article is aimed at the study of Ukrainian quasi-historical novels of the early 21st century, characterized by the renunciation of “objectivity” of the narrative and emphasized the role of imagination. These are the pieces by Bakalets and Yarish (“From the Seventh Bottom”), Vynnychuk (“The Pharmacist”, “Lutetia”), and by Yatsenko (“Nechui. Nemov. Nebach”). The study reveals the features and functions of fantastic characters in the abovementioned novels. These fictional images of modern Ukrainian quasihistorical literary discourse are characterized by infernality, grotesque anthropomorphism, destruction of traditional antinomy “otherworldly– earthly/human”, philosophical and ironic coloring. Interpreting the fantasy in quasi-historical novels is expedient in the context of the global problem of perception of historical past by people of the 21st Century, with an emphasis on significant changes in public consciousness motivating writers to “Re-write/Reimagine the past”. The spread of this phenomenon reveals public distrust of the authorities, offering “correct” answers to the questions about past events, protest against permanent manipulation of historical facts (the tendency of growing consciousness and intellectualization of society).


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Locati ◽  
Roberto Vallone ◽  
Matteo Ghetta ◽  
Nyall Dawson

An increasing number of web services providing convenient access to seismological data have become available in recent years. A huge effort at multiple levels was required to achieve this goal and the seismological community was engaged in the standardization of both data formats and web services. Although access to seismological data is much easier than in the past, users encounter problems because of the large number of web services, and due to the complexity of the discipline-specific data encodings. In addition, instead of adopting cross-disciplinary standards such as those by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), most seismological web services created their own standards, primarily those by the International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks (FDSN). This article introduces “QQuake,” a plugin for QGIS—the Open Source Geographic Information System—that aims at making access to seismological data easier. The plugin is based on an Open Source code available on GitHub, and it is designed in a modular and customizable way, allowing users to easily include new web services.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (44) ◽  
pp. eabc6599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Gurven ◽  
Thomas S. Kraft ◽  
Sarah Alami ◽  
Juan Copajira Adrian ◽  
Edhitt Cortez Linares ◽  
...  

Normal human body temperature (BT) has long been considered to be 37.0°C. Yet, BTs have declined over the past two centuries in the United States, coinciding with reductions in infection and increasing life expectancy. The generality of and reasons behind this phenomenon have not yet been well studied. Here, we show that Bolivian forager-farmers (n = 17,958 observations of 5481 adults age 15+ years) inhabiting a pathogen-rich environment exhibited higher BT when first examined in the early 21st century (~37.0°C). BT subsequently declined by ~0.05°C/year over 16 years of socioeconomic and epidemiological change to ~36.5°C by 2018. As predicted, infections and other lifestyle factors explain variation in BT, but these factors do not account for the temporal declines. Changes in physical activity, body composition, antibiotic usage, and thermal environment are potential causes of the temporal decline.


Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 983 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Patrut ◽  
Stephan Woodborne ◽  
Roxana T. Patrut ◽  
Grant Hall ◽  
Laszlo Rakosy ◽  
...  

The year 2016 witnessed the fall of a symbol of the botanical world: the historic Chapman baobab of Botswana. This article presents the results of our investigation of the standing and fallen tree. The Chapman baobab had an open ring-shaped structure composed of six partially fused stems. Several wood samples collected from the stems prior and after their collapse were analysed by using radiocarbon dating. The radiocarbon date of the oldest sample was 1381 ± 22 BP, which corresponds to a calibrated age of 1345 (+10, −15) calendar years. The dating results show that the six stems of the Chapman baobab belonged to three different generations, which were 1350–1400, 800–1000 and 500–600 years old. The growth rate variation of the largest and oldest stem is presented and correlated with the climate evolution in the area over the past 1000 years. The factors that determined the sudden fall and death of the Chapman baobab are also presented and discussed.


The Holocene ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (7) ◽  
pp. 1105-1111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Holmes ◽  
Carol Arrowsmith ◽  
William Austin ◽  
John Boyle ◽  
Elizabeth Fisher ◽  
...  

Geology ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (8) ◽  
pp. e217-e217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Waliur Rahaman ◽  
Sunil K. Singh ◽  
Rajiv Sinha ◽  
S.K. Tandon

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