Christoph Grützner

• Dr (Dipl. Geophysicist)
• PostDoc Position at Friedrich Schiller University Jena

The presence of fault scarps is a first-order criterion for identifying active faults. Yet the preservation of these features depends on the recurrence interval between surface rupturing events, combined with the rates of erosional and depositional processes that act on the landscape. Within arid continental interiors single earthquake scarps can b...

The Zailisky Alatau is a >250-km-long mountain range in Southern Kazakhstan. Its northern rangefront around the major city of Almaty has more than 4 km topographic relief, yet in contrast to other large mountain fronts in the Tien Shan, little is known about its Late Quaternary tectonic activity despite several destructive earthquakes in the histor...

High-resolution elevation models, palaeoseismic trenching, and Quaternary dating demonstrate that the Kenchreai Fault in the eastern Gulf of Corinth (Greece) has ruptured in the Holocene. Along with the adjacent Pisia and Heraion Faults (which ruptured in 1981), our results indicate the presence of closely-spaced and parallel normal faults that are...

The Tien Shan accommodates a significant portion of the India‐Eurasia N‐S convergence. In its northern part a zigzag pattern of mountain ranges bounds the western Ili Basin. The role of this basin in the overall shortening and the regional kinematics is not well understood. Geodetic data and instrumental seismicity are not sufficient to infer the r...

The Dinaric Fault System in western Slovenia, consisting of NW-SE trending, right-lateral strike-slip faults, accommodates the northward motion of Adria with respect to Eurasia. These active faults show a clear imprint in the morphology and some of them hosted moderate instrumental earthquakes. However, it is largely unknown if the faults also had...

This book presents overviews of modern, twenty-first century methods that are used to investigate the physical characteristics of past earthquakes. Where did earthquakes occur? How large were they? Which tectonic faults caused them? How strong were the ground motions and where?

The eastern sector of the Alps has been heavily influenced by post-collisional indentation tectonics since the Miocene. In current times Adria-Europe convergence, albeit slow, is accommodated and distributed across several faults in the Eastern Alps. Instrumental seismicity records cover only a portion of the timescale from what can be considered s...

The Periadriatic Fault system (PAF) ranks among the largest post-collisional structures of the European Alps. Recent geodetic data suggest that a fraction of the Adria–Europe convergence is still being accommodated in the Eastern Alps. However, the historical seismicity records along the easternmost segment of the PAF are ambiguous, and instrumenta...

The Salinarröt is the lowermost part of the Upper Buntsandstein/Middle Triassic and crops out in various places east of Jena. It is an evaporitic unit consisting of gypsum layers, which are interbedded with clays and marlstones. The Salinarröt close to the surface in the eastern part of the Thuringian Syncline represents the leached and altered pro...

We applied an interdisciplinary approach to analyze the late Quaternary activity of the Sava Fault in the Slovenian Southern Alps. The Sava Fault is an active strike-slip fault, and part of the Periadriatic Fault System that accommodated the convergence of Adria and Europe. It is one of the longest faults in the Southern Alps. Using high-resolution...

The Ms7.3 1948 Aşgabat earthquake was one of the most devastating earthquakes of the 20th century, yet little is known about its location, style, and causative fault. In this study, we bring together new seismic and geomorphic observations with previously published descriptions of surface rupture and damage distributions to determine the likely sou...

The city of Cusco (Peru, Central Andes) has been severely damaged by several major earthquakes during pre-Hispanic times, and more recently in 1650 and 1950 CE. While the sources of those earthquakes are unknown, a system of active normal faults trending SE-NW and cutting Quaternary glacial deposits borders the city to the north. A detailed neotect...

The northward motion and rotation of the Adriatic Plate leads to crustal deformation in the Southern Alps and in the Dinarides. Many aspects of the active tectonics in that area have not been properly understood, for example the distribution and localization of strain, the paleoseismic history of the largest faults, the seismic sources for large hi...

This paper demonstrates how historical research is a valuable tool for identifying past geological, geomorphological and climatic hazards and therefore critical for mitigating and reducing future risk. The authors describe the potential of a scientific field that straddles that of the geologist, geographer, historian and archivist. Historical recor...

The Pustertal-Gailtal Line (PGL) belongs to the dextrally transpressive Periadriatic Fault system and forms the border between Southern and Eastern Alps. Although part of the ongoing convergence between Adria and Europe appears to be accommodated by this fault system, it reveals little instrumental and historical seismicity. In our study, we attemp...

Remote sensing-based tectonic geomorphology is widely applied to study neotectonic processes. This technique is relatively cheap and easy to apply, and it allows investigating large areas for tectonic activity. Existing literature comprises a variety of indices and techniques, seemingly able to work in almost all tectonic settings. In this paper w...

The Periadriatic Fault System (PAF) ranks among the largest post-collisional structures of the European Alps. Recent Global Satellite Navigation Systems data suggest that a fraction of the Adria-Europe convergence is still being accommodated in the Eastern Alps. However, the historical seismicity records along the easternmost segment of the PAF are...

The Salinarröt is the lowermost part of the Upper Buntsandstein/Middle Triassic and crops out in various places east of Jena. It is an evaporitic unit that represents the leached and altered product of a primary stratigraphic succession consisting of rock salt and anhydrite. It is made up by gypsum layers, which are interbedded with clays and marls...

In the Barbarossa Cave in Thuringia, Germany, stratiform folds on a centimetre scale are found in the finely laminated layers of the Werra Anhydrite, which can be subdivided into four different structural types. The genesis of these enterolithic folds (German: Schlangengips; lit. “snake gypsum”) is still debated. In this paper we report on new fiel...

The study of surface ruptures is key to understanding the earthquake occurrence of faults especially in the absence of historical events. We present a detailed analysis of geomorphic displacements along the Dzhungarian Fault, which straddles the border of China and Kazakhstan. We use digital elevation models derived from structure‐from‐motion analy...

In our paper Diercks et al. (2021) we presented geomorphological data and field observations from W Slovenia and NE Italy to develop a model for the formation of the Pradolino (slov. Pradol) dry valley. After publication we were kindly pointed to existing studies on the area that we were unaware of. To fill that gap and to properly credit previous...

Over the past decades, substantial progress has been made in tsunami research. Be that as it may, little is still known about tsunami deposits and their related depositional mechanisms in coastal areas in historical and archaeological contexts. In particular, the Phoenician, Greek and Roman trade and military networks along the Mediterranean and At...

The Main Köpetdag fault (MKDF) of Turkmenistan is one of the longest (≈500 km) and the most rapidly straining (9.1 ± 1.3 mm/yr) faults of the Arabia–Eurasia collision zone, and yet, in contrast to adjacent parts of Turkmenistan and Iran, it has little in the way of observed seismicity. Field observations indicate a fresh paleorupture along an ≈100...

The Dinaric Fault System in western Slovenia, consisting of NW–SE-trending, right-lateral strike-slip faults, accommodates the northward motion of Adria with respect to Eurasia. These active faults show a clear imprint in the morphology, and some of them hosted moderate instrumental earthquakes. However, it is largely unknown if the faults also had...

A significant amount of the ongoing shortening between the Eurasian and Arabian plates is accommodated within the Zagros Fold‐Thrust Belt. However, the spatial and temporal distribution of active shortening within the belt, especially in its NW part, is not yet well constrained. We determined depositional ages of uplifted river terraces crossing th...

We provide the first measurement of strike‐slip and shortening rates across the 200‐km‐long right‐lateral strike‐slip Main Köpetdag Fault (MKDF) in Turkmenistan. Strike‐slip and shortening components are accommodated on parallel structures separated by ∼10 km. Using Infra‐red‐stimulated luminescence and reconstruction of offset alluvial fans we fin...

In tectonically active mountain ranges, the landscape is shaped by the interplay of erosion/sedimentation and tectonically driven crustal deformation. Characteristic landforms such as moraines, wind gaps, fault scarps, and river terraces can be used to decipher the landscape evolution. However, the available data often allow for different interpret...

The Bolivian Amazon foreland basin is controlled by i) the sediment input from the Andes and the topographic load; ii) the basinal uplift in the forebulge; and iii) the uplifting Fitzcarrald Arch in the north. These boundary conditions should lead to bending and active faulting of the crust. However, although the presence of active faults has been...

The Dinarides fold-thrust belt on the Balkan Peninsula resulted from convergence between the Adriatic and Eurasian plates since Mid-Jurassic times. Under the Dinarides, S-wave receiver functions, P-wave tomographic models, and shear-wave splitting data show anomalously thin lithosphere overlying a short down-flexed slab geometry. This geometry sugg...

The NW segment of the Zagros Mountain Front Flexure in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq forms a prominent topographic and structural step separating the High Folded and Foothill zones. Due to scarcity of subsurface data, the geometry of faults underlying this flexure and the degree of basement involvement are poorly constrained. To overcome this, we es...

The Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu (Cusco, Peru) is one of the most important archaeological monuments in Peru and worldwide. Machu Picchu is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site and at risk from climatic change. However, the seismic centennial history of Peru reports large earthquakes generated both along the subduction zone (Mw8) and on...

The NW-SE trending Udine-Buttrio Thrust is a partly blind fault that affects the Friulian plain southeast of Udine in NE Italy. It is part of a wider fault system that accommodates the northward motion of the Adriatic plate. Although seismic reflection data and morphological evidence show that the fault was active during the Quaternary, comparably...

Tsunamis have repeatedly hit the shores of Oman (Northern Arabian Sea) in historical times (e.g. 1945, 2013). These events had small (< 3 m) wave heights and short inundation distances, but it is unclear if much stronger events can affect the area. Boulder deposits and fine-grained sediments are described from the north coast of Oman, which are int...

Large pre-historical earthquakes leave traces in the geological and geomorphological record, such as primary and secondary surface ruptures and mass movements, which are the only means to estimate their magnitudes. These environmental earthquake effects (EEEs) can be calibrated using recent seismic events and the Environmental Seismic Intensity Sca...

The Mountain Front Flexure marks a dominant topographic step in the frontal part of the Zagros Fold–Thrust Belt. It is characterized by numerous active anticlines atop of a basement fault. So far, little is known about the relative activity of the anticlines, about their evolution, or about how crustal deformation migrates over time. We assessed th...

The Mountain Front Flexure marks a dominant topographic step in the frontal part of the Zagros Fold-Thrust Belt. It is characterized by numerous active anticlines atop of an underlying basement fault. So far, little is known about the relative activity of the anticlines, about their evolution, and about how crustal deformation migrates over time. W...

Interpretation of surface fault scarps and palaeoseismic trenches is a key component of estimating fault slip rates, earthquake recurrence rates and maximum magnitudes for hazard assessments. Often these analyses rely on the assumption that successive earthquakes all breached the surface and that the ruptures are recorded topographically, or by the...

We demonstrate that a continental interior reverse fault is deforming by aseismic creep, presently, and likely also in the long term. The Karkara Rangefront Fault, part of the larger Main Terskey Front, forms the northern boundary of the high Terskey Tien Shan in southeastern Kazakhstan and is a mature structure with evidence for high slip rates th...

It was demonstrated that within the eastern part of Northern Tien-Shan and Dzhungarya active faults with wings shifted in the late Pleistocene – Holocene have the striking different from the direction of the newest structures, mainly sublateral ones. These faults represent right-shift disjunctive structures of north-western strike. They are the res...

The eastern Southern Alps-Dinarides region marks the transition from head-on thrusting on E-W thrust faults in Italy to right-lateral strike-slip faulting on NW-SE striking structures mainly in Slovenia. We investigate the major active faults, their sense of motion, their Quaternary tectonic history, and how they drive erosion using a set of interd...

The Zagros Mountain Front Flexure (MFF) separates the Simply Folded Belt from the Zagros Foredeep. It has been allocated to an inherited basement fault that has been reactivated c. 5 Ma ago due to the Eurasia-Arabia convergence. The MFF marks a dominant topographic step and is characterized by numerous active anticlines atop of fault strands emergi...

In tectonically active regions, the geomorphic indices and hence the landscape maturity can be used as proxies to disclose the related tectonic activity. As an active orogenic belt, the Zagros Mountains can serve best to employ such approaches. One of the dominant morphotectonic boundaries within the Zagros is the Mountain Front Flexure (MFF), whic...

On 12 November 2017, an earthquake of Mw 7.3 occurred in the Zagros Mountain Belt, Iran-Iraq border area, at a depth of 19 km with an oblique thrust faulting focal mechanism. We used Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) data to determine the ground deformation of the main shock and two largest aftershocks on 11 Dec. 2017 (M 5.4) and 11...

The relative motion between the South Caspian Basin (SCB) and its surroundings is accommodated by left-lateral fault systems in Iran, and the right-lateral Main Kopeh Dagh Fault (MKDF, aka Ashgabat Fault) in Turkmenistan. Determining the rates of slip on these faults is key for understanding the motion of the SCB. However, several different tectoni...

The eastern Southern Alps-Dinarides region is subjected to the strongest crustal motion in the entire Alps. It marks the transition from head-on thrusting on E-W thrust faults in Italy to right-lateral strike-slip faulting on NW-SE striking structures mainly in Slovenia (Fig. 1). In the framework of SPP 2017 ‘Mountain building processes in 4D’ we s...

We report on a loess-paleosol sequence (LPS) near Remizovka, located in the northern Tian Shan piedmont of southeastern Kazakhstan. This site represents a key record for Late Pleistocene climatic fluctuations at the intersection of major northern hemisphere climate subsystems. This paper develops a synthesized dataset of previous conflicting studie...

The relative motion between the South Caspian Basin (SCB) and its surroundings is accommodated by left-lateral fault systems in Iran, and the right-lateral Main Kopeh Dagh Fault (aka Ashgabat Fault) in Turkmenistan. Determining the rates of slip on these faults is key for understanding the motion of the SCB. However, several different tectonic mode...

The Zailisky Alatau is a >250 km long mountain range in Southern Kazakhstan. Its northern rangefront around the major city of Almaty has more than 4 km topographic relief, yet in contrast to other large mountain fronts in the Tien Shan, little is known about its Late Quaternary tectonic activity despite several destructive earthquakes in the histor...

Τhe most important active fault that intersects the eastern tip of Corinth Canal,the Kalamaki-Isthmia fault, is studied in detail, involving data analysis from nine boreholes, magnetic susceptibility measurements within boreholes and paleoenvironmental interpretations. Samples taken from boreholes were analysed and paleoenvironmental changes in the...

Detailed information on shallow sediment distribution in basins is required to achieve solutions for problems in Quaternary geology, geomorphology, neotectonics, (geo)archaeology, and climatology. Usually, detailed information is obtained by studying outcrops and shallow drillings. Unfortunately, such data are often sparsely distributed and thus ca...

The presence of fault scarps is a first-order criterion for identifying active faults. Yet the preservation of these features depends on the recurrence interval between surface rupturing events, combined with the rates of erosional and depositional processes that act on the landscape. Within arid continental interiors single earthquake scarps can b...

The 7th annual PATA (Paleoseismology, Active Tectonics, and Archeoseismology) Days Workshop was held from 30 May through 3 June, 2016 in beautiful Crestone, Colorado, USA. PATA Days is the premiere event for the INQUA focus group “Earthquake Geology and Seismic Hazards” (IFG EGSHaz). PATA Days provides a venue for the international exchange of new...

The 7th International Workshop on Paleoseismology, Active Tectonics and Archeoseismology (7th PATA Days) is being held in Crestone, Colorado, USA from 30-May through 3-June, 2016. The Workshop was preceded by the 1st PATA Road Trip, “Faults of the Wild West”, a 2000-km, 6-day, limited attendance field trip led by Jim McCalpin to classic faults of t...

This paper presents results of field work at the Dzhungarian Fault in the northernmost Tien Shan in East Kazakhstan. This right-lateral strike-slip fault is several hundred kilometres long; a fault scarp extends for more than 30 km in the central part of the fault. We surveyed offset morphological markers such as terrace risers and river terraces w...

This paper discusses paleoseismological investigations in the Tien Shan. We use two case studies to illustrate problems that confront research on active faults and seismic hazard. In the Tien Shan, large E-W striking thrust faults and conjugate strike-slip faults take up several mm/yr of distributed N-S shortening. Many of them are characterized by...

The 7th International Workshop on Paleoseismology, Active Tectonics and Archeoseismology (7th PATA Days) was held in Crestone, Colorado, USA from 30-May through 3-June, 2016. The Workshop was preceded by the 1st PATA Road Trip, “Faults of the Wild West”, a 2000-km, 6-day, limited attendance field trip led by Jim McCalpin to classic faults of the we...

Dilatant faults often form in rocks containing pre-existing joints, but the effects of joints on fault segment linkage and fracture connectivity are not well understood. We present an analogue modeling study using cohesive powder with pre-formed joint sets in the upper layer, varying the angle between joints and a rigid basement fault. We analyze i...

Dilatant faults often form in rocks containing pre-existing joints, but the effects of joints on fault segment linkage and fracture connectivity are not well understood. We present an analogue modeling study using cohesive powder with pre-formed joint sets in the upper layer, varying the angle between joints and a rigid basement fault. We analyze i...

Τhe most important active fault that intersects the eastern tip of Corinth Canal,the Kalamaki-Isthmia fault, is studied in detail, involving data analysis from nine boreholes, magnetic susceptibility measurements within boreholes and paleoenvironmental interpretations. Samples taken from boreholes were analysed and paleoenvironmental changes in the...

El presente trabajo ilustra el estado del conocimiento sobre arqueosismología en la antigua ciudad romana de Baelo Claudia (Tarifa, Cádiz) tras casi quince años de investigaciones. Esta antigua ciudad romana se vio afectada por dos importantes terremotos en los años 40–60 AD y 260–290 AD. El primero de ellos afectó en mayor grado a la parte baja (c...

The Lower Rhine Embayment in Central Europe hosts a rift system that has very low deformation rates. The faults in this area have slip rates of less than 0.1 mm yr−1, which does not allow to investigate ongoing tectonic deformation with geodetic techniques, unless they cover very long time spans. Instrumental seismicity does only cover a small frac...

Dilatant faults often form in rocks containing pre-existing joints, but the effects of joints on fault segment linkage and fracture connectivity is not well understood. We present an analogue modeling study using cohesive powder with pre-formed joint sets in the upper layer, varying the angle between joints and a rigid basement fault. We analyze in...

Northern Attica in Greece is characterized by a set of north dipping, subparallel normal faults. These faults were considered to have low tectonic activity, based on historical earthquake reports, instrumental seismicity and slip rate estimates. This study presents new data for one of these faults, the Milesi Fault. We run GIS based geomorphologica...

This work illustrates the state of the art on archaeoseismology of the ancient Roman city of Baelo Claudia (Tarifa, Cádiz). This ancient Roman site was affected by two earthquakes in the years AD 40-60 and AD 260-290 which promoted important urban and architectural changes and eventually the destruction and further abandonment of the city in AD 365...

Dilatant faults often form in rocks containing pre-existing joints, but the effects of joints on fault segment linkage and fracture connectivity is not well understood. We present an analogue modeling study using cohesive powder with pre-formed joint sets in the upper layer, varying the angle between joints and a rigid basement fault. We analyze in...

Northern Attica in Greece is characterized by a set of north dipping, subparallel normal faults. These faults were considered to have low tectonic activity, based on historical earthquake reports, instrumental seismicity and slip rate estimates. This study presents new data for one of these faults, the Milesi Fault. We run GIS based geomorphologica...

The Arabian Sea is regarded as one of the least studied regions in terms of coastal hazards such as storm surges and tsunamis. The Makran Subdution Zone (MSZ) is the dominating structure in the Arabian Sea. Here the Arabian Plate is subducted beneath the Eurasian Plate. The seismicity of the MSZ is comparatively low and the historic record is fragm...

The Tien Shan results from the ongoing collision of India and Eurasia, hosting E-W elongated intermontane and intramontane basins. Roughly 10 mm/yr of N-S shortening - about a quarter of the total convergence rate between the two continents - is accommodated across the Eastern Tien Shan Mountains and the Dzhungarian Ala-tau in SE Kazakhstan. These...

Around one quarter (~10 mm/yr) of the India-Eurasia convergence is accommodated across the Tien Shan and Dzhungarian Ala-tau mountain ranges of eastern Kazakhstan. Essentially N-S shortening is distributed among a number of active faults in a wide area. E-W trending thrust faults and growing anticlines appear to accommodate the majority of shorteni...

The Arabian Sea is regarded as one of the least studied regions in terms of coastal hazards such as storm surges and tsunamis. The Makran Subdution Zone (MSZ) is the dominating structure in the Arabian Sea. Here the Arabian Plate is subducted beneath the Eurasian Plate. The seismicity of the MSZ is comparatively low and the historic record is fragm...

Magnitude estimations for paleo-earthquakes are mainly based on empirical relationships that use surface rupture lengths and maximum surface offsets as input parameters. Recent events like the 2010 El Mayor-Cucapah earthquake and the 2014 Napa earthquake have demonstrated that surface ruptures can occur in highly complex patterns. Not only can rupt...