Earth Observatory of Singapore

"One of the things that first made me interested in geology was hearing about the number of places that geologists travel to for work." Tim Dawson, a Senior Engineering Geologist at California Geological Survey, reflects on the perks of being a geologist, and describes his most recent adventure in the trenches in northern Myanmar and Thailand during an earthquake geology...

On 25 April 2015, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal, destroying buildings and infrastructure across 31 of Nepal’s 70 districts. Approximately 9,000 people lost their lives to the earthquake that day, 22,000 suffered from injuries, and eight million were affected. I arrived in Kathmandu one week after the quake to support the government of Nepal in various response and recovery activities.

Our multi-disciplinary project explores the paleotsunami record in northwestern Aceh Province, Sumatra. We are focusing on an extraordinary sedimentary deposit in a coastal limestone cave that contains a series of tsunami deposits separated by guano, and offer a nearly complete mid-Holocene record of tsunamis. Our investigations will be incorporated into tsunami hazard modelling and risk assessment along the western...

Scientists have long known that Myammar is tectonically vulnerable. But only recently, says Dr Paramesh Banerjee, have they been able to understand the full extent of the country’s seismic activity. This new insight is made possible by the new Myanmar Seismic Network, established earlier this year.