The triggering of slope failures can cause a significant impact on human settlements and infrastructure in cities, coasts, islands and mountains. Therefore, a reliable evaluation of the landslide hazard would help mitigate the effects of such landslides and decrease the relevant risk. The goal of this paper is to develop, for the first time on a regional scale (1:100,000), a landslide susceptibility map for the entire area of the Attica region in Greece. In order to achieve this, a database of slope failures triggered in the Attica Region from 1961 to 2020 was developed and a semi-quantitative heuristic methodology called Rock Engineering System (RES) was applied through an interaction matrix, where ten parameters, selected as controlling factors for the landslide occurrence, were statistically correlated with the spatial distribution of slope failures. The generated model was validated by using historical landslide data, field-verified slope failures and a methodology developed by the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries, showing a satisfactory correlation between the expected and existing landslide susceptibility level. Having compiled the landslide susceptibility map, studies focusing on landslide risk assessment can be realized in the Attica Region.
We describe and make available a dataset of 64 data points of Global Positioning System (GPS) displacements for significant, shallow earthquakes in Greece during the period 1997-2017. The displacement data can be used by earthquake geologists, engineers and seismologists in an effort to better understand the faulting process, the rupture mechanics, the pattern of ground-motions, and in engineering applications. We include recordings from GNSS networks at near-source to regional distances (2–132 km) for 11 earthquakes between global CMT moment magnitudes (Mw) 5.5 and 6.9. We also model the magnitude scaling properties of peak ground horizontal displacements (PGD and PGD-S) for these events using L1-norm minimisation regression. Our data indicate an almost linear attenuation of seismic strain with distance for this range of seismic magnitudes. We developed a set of relationships based on PGD (in cm) and distance to hypocentre R (in km), which may be used for the rapid estimation of the earthquake magnitude in near real-time.MwPGD = [LOG(PGD) + 8.2849]/(1.6810 – 0.2453LOGR)MwPGD-S = [LOG(PGD-S) + 8.0839]/(1.6793 – 0.2447LOGR)
On 3 March 2021 (10:16, UTC), a strong earthquake, Mw 6.3, occurred in Elassona, Central Greece. The epicenter was reported 10 km west of Tyrnavos. Another major earthquake followed this event on the same day at Mw 5.8 (3 March 2021, 11:45, UTC). The next day, 4 March 2021 (18:38, UTC), there was a second event with a similar magnitude as the first, Mw 6.2. Both events were 8.5 km apart. The following analysis shows that the previous events and the most significant aftershocks were superficial. However, historical and modern seismicity has been sparse in this area. Spatially, the region represents a transitional zone between different tectonic domains; the right-lateral slip along the western end of the North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ) in the north Aegean Sea plate-boundary structure ends, and crustal extension prevails in mainland Greece. These earthquakes were followed by rich seismic activity recorded by peripheral seismographs and accelerometers. The installation of a dense, portable network from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki team also helped this effort, installed three days after the seismic excitation, as seismological stations did not azimuthally enclose the area. In the present work, a detailed analysis was performed using seismological data. A seismological catalogue of 3.787 events was used, which was processed with modern methods to calculate 34 focal mechanisms (Mw > 4.0) and to recalculate the parameters of the largest earthquakes that occurred in the first two days.
In 2014–2018, four strong earthquakes occurred in the Ionian Sea, Greece. After these events, a rich aftershock sequence followed. More analytically, according to the manual solutions of the National Observatory of Athens, the first event occurred on 26 January 2014 in Cephalonia Island with magnitude ML = 5.8, followed by another in the same region on 3 February 2014 with magnitude ML = 5.7. The third event occurred on 17 November 2015, ML = 6.0 in Lefkas Island and the last on 25 October 2018, ML = 6.6 in Zakynthos Island. The first three of these earthquakes caused moderate structural damages, mainly in houses and produced particular unrest to the local population. This work determines a seismic moment tensor for both large and intermediate magnitude earthquakes (M > 4.0). Geodetic data from permanent GPS stations were analyzed to investigate the displacement due to the earthquakes.
27 July 2017 in Bulletin of the Geological Society of Greece
The ground motions in the Kalochori region (well known for its subsidence history during the 2nd half of 20th century) were investigated by NOA using a mobile GNSS (GPS) network, comprising 18 stations. The network was measured four (4) times during the period October 2013 - April 2015 under the framework of the research project INDES-MUSA. Our GPS measurements were processed with GAMIT software and show vertical (ITRF 2008) motions ranging from -2 cm to +2 cm (i.e. just above the margins of measurement error) with the exception of the Kalochori dam where an uplift of 2-5 cm was observed. We also found no evidence for local (non-tectonic) motions and/or interseismic strain.