Ioannis D. Papanikolaοu

• PhD University College London (UCL)
• Professor (Full) at Agricultural University of Athens

First Evidence of Microplastics in Mt. Tymfi’s Alpine Lake (Dragonlake) in Greece, Using μ-Raman Spectroscopy.

Plain Language Summary Slip rates of active faults are used in seismic hazard assessment to infer the frequency of damaging earthquakes. However slip rates are known to be variable when measured using different methodologies (e.g., geodesy, geomorphology) and timescales (years to millennia) for many types of faults in a range of tectonic settings....

Uncertainty concerning the processes responsible for slip-rate fluctuations associated with temporal clustering of surface faulting earthquakes is a fundamental, unresolved issue in tectonics, because strain-rates accommodated by fault/shear-zone structures are the key to understanding the viscosity structure of the crust and seismic hazard. We con...

The relationships between kinematics and fault geometry for the coseismic ruptures from the 24th and 25th February 1981 earthquake sequence in the eastern Gulf of Corinth (Ms 6.7 and 6.4) are analysed. The two earthquakes ruptured faults located across strike rather than along strike as typifies other earthquake sequences. In detail, surface ruptur...

Sixteen surface (5) and groundwater (11) samples were collected from the south-eastern part of Attica, Greece, and analysed for physico-chemical parameters and microplastics (MPs) by optical microscopy and Raman microspectroscopy (RS). A total of 3399 particles were optically identified in all sixteen samples, ranging from only 16 particles/L in a...

Remote sensing techniques, namely Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) photogrammetry and t-LiDAR (terrestrial Light Detection and Ranging), two well-established techniques, were applied for seven years in a mountainous Mediterranean catchment in Greece (Ilioupoli test site, Athens), following a wildfire event in 2015. The goal was to monitor and quantify...

Geodetically-derived deformation rates are sometimes used to infer seismic hazard, implicitly assuming that short-term (annual-decadal) deformation is representative of longer-term deformation. This is despite geological observations indicating that deformation/slip rates are variable over a range of timescales. Using geodetic data from 2016-2021,...

Model-based soil erosion studies have increased in number, given the availability of geo-data and the recent technological advances. However, their accuracy remains rather questionable since the scarcity of field records hinders the validation of simulated values. In this context, this study aims to present a method for measuring sediment depositio...

Surface faulting earthquakes are known to cluster in time from historical and palaeoseismic studies, but the mechanism(s) responsible for clustering, such as fault interaction, strain-storage, and evolving dynamic topography, are poorly quantified, and hence not well understood. We present a quantified replication of observed earthquake clustering...

This research focuses on the application of an emerging technique such as the UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) photogrammetry and the widely used terrestrial LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) in geomorphological change detection (Gulyaev and Buckeridge, 2004, Niethammer et al., 2012, Rosca et al., 2018) and soil erosion modeling validation. The UAV...

The Strymon basin (Northern Greece) belongs to the geodynamically active regime of the Aegean and, as expected, it hosts active faults. Nevertheless, the study area exhibits a low instrumentally and historically recorded seismicity. In order to comprehend the crustal deformation, we implemented GNSS- and InSAR-based techniques. Global Navigation Sa...

The cover management factor (C-factor) calculation requires the assessment of the intra‐annual spatiotemporal variability of biomass cover, owed to the natural growth cycle of vegetation and the impact of agriculture on land cover. However, this is frequently omitted, and the vegetation conditions are approximated by assigning constant values to st...

In eastern Crete, several normal faults trend both NNE-SSW and E-W. Most of them form impressive bedrock fault scarps indicating ongoing extension in the Hellenic fore-arc. No earthquakes from historical and instrumental catalogues can be directly associated with these faults. Geomorphologic profiles across five different faults in sites well-prese...

The agricultural uses of the Coordination of Information on the Environment Land Cover (CLC) dataset suffer from limitations such as temporal stationarity, low spatial resolution, broad and rather simplified grouping of classes. The study attempts to address these shortcomings, using as test site the Sperchios River catchment, Central Greece. The G...

The Plio-Quaternary Mygdonia Basin in Northern Greece is bounded by active normal faults that can host significant earthquakes and produce considerable damage to the city of Thessaloniki (the second biggest city in Greece – 1 million population), located only 15–20 km away. In 1978, a damaging M = 6.5 earthquake occurred along a fault in the southe...

To assess whether continental extension and seismic hazard are spatially-localized on single faults or spread over wide regions containing multiple active faults, we investigated temporal and spatial slip-rate variability over many millennia using in-situ ³⁶ Cl cosmogenic exposure dating for active normal faults near Athens, Greece. We study a ~ NN...

Soil changes, including landslides and erosion, are some of the most prominent post-fire effects in Mediterranean ecosystems. Landslide detection and monitoring play an essential role in mitigation measures. We tested two different methodologies in five burned sites with different characteristics in Central Greece. We compared Unmanned Aerial Vehic...

As of January 2016, the Solvency II Directive demands that all insurance companies in the EU perform a Solvency Capital Requirement (SCR) calculation. We propose an earthquake catastrophe model that calculates the SCR using an innovative hazard module. We test our model in the Attica region, which hosts 41.6% of the insured buildings in Greece. The...

Forest fires burn with varying severity across landscapes. As severity is tied with fire’s ecological effects, evaluating and mapping it after a fire, is highly useful for efficient post-fire assessment and management. The aim of this study is to introduce the broadly used Composite Burn Index (CBI) for the assessment of fire severity in Greece. Ad...

This study presents new thermochronometric data to constrain the cooling history of the Pindos fold-and-thrust-belt (PFTB) on the NW Peloponnese, and the timing of nappe stacking in the external Hellenides in western Greece. Low-temperature thermochronology was performed on apatite and zircon minerals extracted from basal exposures of the PFBT in M...

Analysis of two small semi-mountainous catchments in central Evia island, Greece, highlights the advantages of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) based change detection methods. We use point clouds derived by both methods in two sites (S1 & S2), to analyse the effects of a recent wildfire on soil erosion. Results ind...

Frost is one the most significant hazards affecting various aspects of human lives including infrastructure, agriculture, economy and biodiversity. Water bodies are one of the key factors controlling temperature fluctuations and frost. This study introduces a contemporary method for identifying and spatially analyzing frost risk and also explores i...

This article is a response to the publication by Nick Marriner, David Kaniewski, Christophe Morhange, Clement Flaux, Matthieu Giaime, Matteo Vacchi and James Goff entitled “Tsunamis in the geological record: Making waves with a cautionary tale from the Mediterranean”, published in October 2017 in Science Advances. Making use of radiometric data set...

Earthquakes are known to cluster in time, from historical and palaeoseismic studies, but the mechanism(s) responsible for clustering, such as evolving dynamic topography, fault interaction, and strain-storage in the crust are poorly quantified, and hence not well understood. We note that differential stress values are (1) output by calculations of...

Recent tsunami events have shown that tsunamis may propagate far inland by entering rivers mouths and may cause massive damage along the river banks. However, so far, only a few studies have been conducted such a search for studying tsunami signals in incised valley systems along the Mediterranean coasts although the tsunami hazard is high. The isl...

The eastern Corinth Gulf is constantly uplifted at least since Middle Pleistocene. This uplift is the combined result of the regional uplift and the activity of major active faults which influence the area. These tectonic movements which control the sedimentation processes of the study area resulted in a complex stratigraphy, paleogeography and pal...

Event deposits of high-energy waves in the Eastern Thermaikos Gulf and Kassandra Peninsula (Northern Greece) are investigated, and evidence for the 479 BC " Herodotus tsunami " is described for the first time. One of the first historical descriptions of tsunami waves and its effects on Persian troops near Potidaea in 479 BC was made by Herodotus. S...

Normal faulting earthquakes rarely rupture the entire extent of active normal faults, and can also jump between neighbouring faults. This confounds attempts to use segmentation models to define the likelihood of future rupture scenarios. We attempt to study this problem comparing the offsets produced in single earthquakes with those produced by mul...

The western Peloponnese was repeatedly hit by major tsunami impacts during historical times as reported by historical accounts and recorded in earthquake and tsunami catalogues. Geological signatures of past tsunami impacts have also been found in many coastal geological archives. During the past years, abundant geomorphological and sedimentary evi...

The Late Bronze Age (LBA) tsunami and the A.D. 365 tsunami are supposed to have affected the northern coasts of Crete. However, near-coast sedimentary archives have been rarely investigated in this area, and sedimentary archives including palaeotsunami fingerprints are still unknown. The main objective of our research was to search for appropriate...

The world-wide first description of a tsunami and its effects in 479 BC was made by Herodotus. The wave hit the coast of Chalkidiki peninsula Greece where we investigated different areas from Angelochori down to Posidi (Kassandra peninsula) and the ruins of Mende. Ancient Mende was a quite important city in the classic Hellenistic period, already f...

Borehole Bh-3, located at the eastern part of the Corinth Isthmus (Greece) in a highly active extensional tectonic environment, is studied in detail. The lithology of the 70-m-long borehole is described, and 55 samples extracted from the core are analyzed for their micropaleontological content. Quantitative analysis of foraminiferal fauna assemblag...

The deformation of the eastern Corinth rift (Greece) is distributed along several E-W trending active normal faults. Here the 25-km-long Pisia fault experienced up to 150 cm of coseismic displacement during the 1981 Alkyonides earthquake sequence (M = 6.7, 6.4, 6.3). Using terrestrial laser scanning, coupled with analyses of color changes, lichen c...

The deformation of the eastern Corinth rift (Greece) is distributed along several E-W trending active normal faults. Here, the 25-km-long Pisia fault experienced up to 150 cm of coseismic displacement during the 1981 Alkyonides earthquake sequence (M = 6.7, 6.4, 6.3). Using terrestrial laser scanning, coupled with analyses of color changes, lichen...

Results from a multidisciplinary investigation at the Lastros-Sfaka Graben located in eastern Crete are presented. 1.3 km of the Lastros fault was scanned with t-LiDAR and we identified areas with minor external influences (anthropogenic, depositional or erosional) to extract throw rates. Preliminary postglacial throw rates are 0.67 ± 0.15 mm/yr.,...

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...

Tidal notches are a generally accepted sea level indicator that, when different from mean sea level, witness tectonic activity at or near coastlines. However, how to infer related information is controversial since tectonic uplift from a single seismic event is not likely to exceed several decimetres. High resolution laser scanning offers the avail...

The Environmental Seismic Intensity (ESI) scale has been officially released in 2007 and is based on the quantification of Earthquake Environmental Effects. Due to its quantitative nature, the scale improves the process of assessing macroseismic intensities, particularly in the epicentral area of those cases in which sole traditional intensity scal...

Many active normal faults throughout the Aegean juxtapose footwall limestone against hanging-wall colluvium. In places, this colluvium becomes cemented and forms large hanging-wall lobes or sheets of varying thickness attached to the bedrock fault. Investigations at the Lastros Fault in eastern Crete allow us to define criteria to distinguish betwe...

The southwestern coast of Crete, one of the most seismically active regions in Europe, experienced co-seismic crust uplift by 9 m during the Ms = 8.3 mega-earthquake that struck the eastern Mediterranean world on 21 July AD 365. An associated tsunami event caused thousands of fatalities and destroyed many coastal settlements and infrastructure betw...

Tidal notches have had the potential to form at sea-level from ~6.5 kyr BP in the Mediterranean basin and preserve a symmetrical shape comparable to a quadric polynomial. Continuous erosion, predominantly by biological agents, affects a limestone cliff face from low- to high-tide level at <1 mm/yr. Statically determined, the roots of a quadric poly...

The deformation of the Corinth rift (Greece) is distributed along several E-W trending active normal faults like the 25-km-long Pisia fault, which experienced up to 110 cm of coseismic displacement during the 1981 Alkyonides earthquake sequence (Mw 6.7). Ages of paleoearthquakes and slip rate estimates of the Pisia fault are not known so far, despi...

Many areas of the Earth’s crust deform by distributed extensional faulting and complex fault interactions are often observed. Geodetic data generally indicate a simpler picture of continuum deformation over decades but relating this behaviour to earthquake occurrence over centuries, given numerous potentially active faults, remains a global problem...

Many areas of the Earth’s crust deform by distributed extensional faulting and the occurrence of earthquakes reflects complex fault interactions. Geodetic data may indicate a simpler picture of continuum deformation over decades but relating this behaviour to earthquake occurrence over centuries, given numerous potentially active faults, remains a...

Fires of 2007 have consumed large areas of Black pine and endemic fir forests in Greece. The current research aims at examining the role of geomorphology and lithology that govern the soil properties upon the post-fire vegetation recovery at the landscape level. A case study from Taygetos Mt, a large part of which was burned in 2007, is presented....

Traditional seismic hazard assessment methods are based on the historical seismic records for the calculation of an annual probability of exceedance for a particular ground motion level. A new fault-specific seismic hazard assessment method is presented, in order to address problems related to the incompleteness and the inhomogeneity of the histori...

The Lastros and Sfaka faults have an antithetic relationship and form a ca. 2 km wide graben within the Ierapetra fault zone in eastern Crete. Both faults have impressive bedrock fault scarps many metres in height which form prominent features within the landscape. t-LiDAR investigations undertaken on the Lastros fault are used to accurately determ...

Tidal notches form at sea-level, predominantly on limestone coasts, during the Holocene. When present-day sea-level is different from distinct and stacked expressions coastal tectonic activities are inferred, in general. However, the relation between the offset of different notch generations and coseismic uplift produced from a single event remains...

Tidal notches have had the potential to form at sea level from ~6,000 years BP in the Mediterranean basin and preserve a symmetrical shape comparable to a quadratic polynomial. Statically determined, the roots are defined by the tidal range. However, gradual variations of eustatic sea-level rise and coseismic uplift in tectonically active regions c...

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...

Results from a multidisciplinary investigation at the Lastros-Sfaka Graben located in eastern Crete are presented. 1.3 km of the Lastros fault was scanned with t-LiDAR and we identified areas with minor external influences (anthropogenic, depositional or erosional) to extract throw rates. Preliminary postglacial throw rates are 0.67 ± 0.15 mm/yr, w...

Tidal notches are a generally accepted sea level indicator that, when different from mean sea level, witness tectonic activity at or near coastlines. However, how to infer related information is controversial since tectonic uplift from a single seismic event is not likely to exceed several decimetres. High resolution laser scanning offers the avail...

Today fires are widely accepted to be a natural agent in forest ecosystems. Nevertheless besides direct impacts of fire, secondary postfire effects may have a considerable impact on the welfare and safety of the affected society. Our research is focused on secondary post-fire hazards like landslides, debris flows, flash floods and erosion processes...

Book title is: Geospatial Technology for Water Resource Applications

Two normal faults on the island of Crete and mainland Greece were studied to test an innovative workflow with the goal of obtaining a more objective palaeoseismic trench log, and a 3-D view of the sedimentary architecture within the trench walls. Sedimentary feature geometries in palaeoseismic trenches are related to palaeoearthquake magnitudes whi...

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...

Fault slip data are analysed from the E-W striking northern and southern Lapithas Mountain faults, which respectively form the northern and southern boundary between the Alpine mountain horst and the Quaternary basins. Kinematic indicators such as corrugations and striations show that slip directions vary on both these individual faults, which is t...

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...

Two normal faults on the Island of Crete and mainland Greece were studied to create and test an innovative workflow to make palaeoseismic trench logging more objective, and visualise the sedimentary architecture within the trench wall in 3-D. This is achieved by combining classical palaeoseismic trenching techniques with multispectral approaches. A...

Earthquakes on Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean that larger than M=5.5 leave there imprint in the landscape as fault scarps. The majority of normal faults through this region comprise postglacial bedrock footwall scarps juxtaposed against Quaternary hanging-wall sediments and are the expression of repeated earthquake ativity and surface faulting....

Surface slip distributions for an active normal fault in central Italy have been measured using terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), in order to assess the impact of changes in fault orientation and kinematics when modelling subsurface slip distributions that control seismic moment release. The southeastern segment of the surface trace of the Campo Fe...

The deformation of the Corinth rift is distributed over numerous normal faults. For instance the ~17-km-long Pisia fault, which experienced up to 150 cm of coseismic displacement during the 1981 Alkyonides earthquake sequence (Mw ~6.7). We investigated a site at the central part of the Pisia fault, which is only affected by minor erosional and depo...

We present the preliminary results from a multi-method investigation on the Lastros-Sfaka Graben located in the Ierapetra Fault Zone in eastern Crete. We scanned c. 1.2 km of the Lastros Fault with t-LiDAR and identified areas for throw rate calculations at locations with no external influences (anthropogenic or erosional). Preliminary maximum thro...

Corinth Gulf is one of the fastest expanding regions worldwide, influenced by several major normal faults. We measured the magnetic susceptibility within boreholes, drilled at the footwall and hanging-wall of the Kalamaki fault, a secondary structure that intersects the Corinth Canal. We correlate magnetic susceptibility (MS) measurements with pale...

Geomorphology is a principal tool for Neotectonics, Earthquake Geology and Paleoseismology. However, it is also a major tool for seismic hazard assessment. There is an emerging tendency and need for incorporating fault specific information relating both to the identification and mapping of active faults as well as extracting information regarding t...

Earthquakes in the Mediterranean larger than M=5.5 leave there imprint in the landscape as fault scarps. The majority of normal faults through this region comprise postglacial bedrock footwall scarps juxtaposed against Quaternary hanging-wall sediments. By using a combination of investigative techniques on both the footwall and hanging-wall, paleos...

Surface slip distributions for an active normal fault in central Italy have been measured using terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), in order to assess the impact of changes in fault orientation and kinematics when modelling subsurface slip distributions that control seismic moment release. The southeastern segment of the surface trace of the Campo...

Soil erosion risk assessment in the Marathon artificial lake basin in Attica, Greece was estimated through extended geomorphological analysis and a comparative study on soil erosion before and after the severe wildfire of 21st August 2009 (data for the years 2008 and 2011 respectively). The assessment of the spatial distribution of soil erosion was...

Low slip-rate faults tend to have large recurrence intervals and are usually regarded that they represent a low hazard probability. However, when these faults neighboring a large city, the risk becomes high. The Afidnai fault is a low slip-rate fault that bounds the northern edge of the Athens Plain and represents such an example. Due to the long r...

Earthquake geology studies the effects, the mechanics and the impacts of earthquakes in the geological environment. Its role is also to decode the fault history, therefore its approach is fault specific and its outcomes are of decisive value for seismic hazard assessment and planning. The term Earthquake geology includes aspects of modern instrumen...

A GPS-derived velocity field is presented from a dense geodetic network (~5km distance between stations) established in the broader area of Athens. It shows significant local variations of strain rates across a major inactive tectonic boundary separating metamorphic and non-metamorphic geotectonic units. The southeastern part of Athens plain displa...

In order to obtain more information on coastal evolution and the preservation of tsunamigenic and/or storm layers, several shallow boreholes were carried out along the shoreline of the Thracian Sea (northern Greece). In flfl at and southerly exposed coastal areas, sedimentary sequences provide evidence for past high-energy sedimentary events, which...