marum.de
Earthquakes have devastating effects on heavily populated coastal areas from both, ground shaking and tsunami. Submarine landslides and catastrophic volcanic flank collapse (and associated tsunamis) pose additional significant risks to coastal the population and to seafloor infrastructure. Together, these processes comprise a significant large-scale natural hazard for which no short-term prediction methods exist.
Improving our understanding of when, where, and how large-scale earthquakes and slope failures occur, is one of the most urgent and challenging tasks faced by modern Earth science. Scientific ocean drilling is uniquely positioned to elucidate the underlying geologic processes that govern the nature and evolution of submarine earthquakes, faulting, and seafloor displacement processes through direct sampling and in situ measurement, including continuous real-time monitoring. more Structure of the Summer School
One focus of the 12 day summer school are scientific lectures (incl. some topic-related lab exercises) and discussions. "Virtual Ship" exercises and practicals will introduce the participants to life as a shipboard scientist, including shipboard scientific methods and work flow during a drilling cruise investigating subseafloor deformation, stability and slip behavior through time.Lectures and lab exercises of the summer school will be instructed both, by Bremen staff and by external experts from leading geoscientific institutions around the world, especially in Europe (see below) who will be invited to cover selected themes and to even more contribute to the added value of the overall topic of the planned 2012 summer school.
On the weekend, in the middle of the summer school, a one-day field trip will be offered. During this trip, we will visit coastal protection infrastructures and discuss the preparedness to potential offshore geohazards in the low-lying coastal areas along the North Sea coast line.