Kris Vanneste

Kris Vanneste
Royal Observatory of Belgium · Department of Reference Systems and Geodynamics

PhD

About

126
Publications
30,038
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
2,259
Citations
Additional affiliations
February 1996 - present
Royal Observatory of Belgium
Position
  • Researcher
February 1996 - present
The Royal Library of Belgium
Position
  • Researcher

Publications

Publications (126)
Article
Full-text available
Chilean Patagonia is confronted with several geohazards due to its tectonic setting, i.e., the presence of a subduction zone and numerous fault zones, e.g., the Liquiñe-Ofqui Fault Zone (LOFZ). This region has therefore been the subject of numerous paleoseismological studies. However, this study reveals that the seismic hazard is not limited to the...
Article
Full-text available
In regions where strong earthquakes occurred before the deployment of dense seismic and accelerometric networks, intensity datasets can help select appropriate ground motion prediction equations (GMPEs) for seismic hazard studies. This is the case for the Hainaut seismic zone, which was one of the most seismically active zones in and around Belgium...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The BELSHAKE database was compiled in the frame of a project funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office and contains ~7000 digital records from 332 natural and induced earthquakes with ML≥2 in and around Belgium since 1985, recorded with broadband, accelerometric, andThe BELSHAKE database was compiled in the frame of a project funded by the Belgia...
Preprint
Full-text available
Chilean Patagonia is confronted with several geohazards due to its tectonic setting, i.e., the presence of a subduction zone and numerous fault zones (e.g. the Liquiñe-Ofqui Fault Zone). This region has therefore been the subject of numerous paleoseismological studies. However, this study reveals that the seismic hazard is not limited to these larg...
Preprint
Full-text available
In regions where strong earthquakes occurred before the deployment of dense seismic and accelerometric networks, intensity datasets can help selecting relevant ground motion prediction equations (GMPEs) for seismic hazard studies. This is the case for the Hainaut seismic zone, which was one of the most seismically active zones in and around Belgium...
Preprint
Full-text available
Earthquake hazard analyses rely on the availability of seismogenic source models. These are designed in different fashions, such as point sources or area sources, but the most effective is the three-dimensional representation of geological faults. We here refer to such models as fault sources. This study presents the European Fault-Source Model 202...
Article
Full-text available
The influence of strain distribution inheritance within fault systems on repeated fault reactivation is far less understood than the process of repeated fault reactivation itself. By evaluating cross sections through a new 3D geological model, we demonstrate contrasts in strain distribution between different fault segments of the same fault system...
Article
Full-text available
Since the 14 th century, moderate seismic activity with 14 earthquakes of magnitude Mw≥5.0 occurred in Western Europe in a region extending from the Lower Rhine Graben (LRG) to the southern North Sea. In this paper, we investigate how well this seismic activity could reflect that of the future. The observed earthquake activity in the LRG is continu...
Preprint
Full-text available
Abstract. After their first development in the middle Mesozoic, the overall NW-SE striking border fault systems of the Roer Valley Graben were reactivated as reverse faults under Late Cretaceous compression (inversion) and reactivated again as normal faults under Cenozoic extension. In Flanders (northern Belgium), a new geological model was created...
Article
Full-text available
Despite the real societal challenge posed by their important potential of destruction, the causes of infrequent moderate and large earthquakes in tectonically stable continental regions (SCR) are not yet well understood. Nevertheless, recent studies suggest that large earthquakes in SCR can be explained by transient perturbations of local crustal s...
Article
Full-text available
According to paleoseismological studies, the last earthquake that ruptured the Main Frontal Thrust in western Nepal occurred in 1505 AD. No evidence of large earthquakes has been documented since, giving rise to the concept of a seismic gap in the central Himalaya. Here, we report on a new record of earthquake-triggered turbidites from Lake Rara, w...
Article
Prominent landforms, either buried or preserved at the seafloor, provide important constraints on the processes that led to the opening and present-day configuration of the Dover Strait. Here, we extend previous investigations on two distinct landform features, the Fosse Dangeard and Lobourg Channel, to better understand the poly-phase history of t...
Article
Subduction zone seismicity arises from megathrust, crustal, and intraslab earthquakes, and understanding the recurrence patterns of each type is crucial for hazard assessments. Lake sediments can record earthquakes from all three seismogenic sources. Here, we studied the turbidite record of Lo Encañado, an Andean lake located in central Chile. We s...
Article
Contemporaneous mass‐transport deposits (MTDs) recorded in lake and fjord sediments provide evidence of past seismic shaking. However, because they are usually not connected to a fault rupture, assessment of the earthquake source remains difficult. Based on observed coseismic mass wasting and associated seismic shaking, previous studies assigned mi...
Poster
Contemporaneous mass transport deposits (MTDs) recorded in high-resolution sediment archives provide evidence of past seismic shaking. However, because they usually cannot be linked directly to a fault rupture, assessment of the earthquake source (location and magnitude or specific fault) based on this type of indirect paleoseismological evidence r...
Presentation
Lake and fjord settings around the world have been the subject of paleoseismological research. The presence of mass transport deposits (MTDs) in these basins has played a major role in identifying past earthquakes. In some cases, the observed MTDs could even be attributed to major prehistorical earthquakes that are linked to activated faults. Howev...
Chapter
Tectonic landforms are generally modest in stable plate interiors characterized by low strain rates and rare earthquakes. Nevertheless, specific investigations identified such landforms in Belgium, which is located in the most seismically active region of stable Europe northwest of the Alps. Here, we present two active fault zones among the best do...
Poster
Many lakes and fjords throughout the world contain mass-transport deposits (MTDs) that have been triggered by earthquakes. These sediment archives are more and more studied to construct a record of past earthquakes. They often provide a more accurate chronology than is possible in paleoseismic trenches on land. However, because MTDs cannot usually...
Article
Full-text available
Collapse activation is an ongoing process in the evolution of karstic networks related to the weakening of cave vaults. Because collapses are infrequent, few have been directly observed, making it challenging to evaluate the role of external processes in their initiation and triggering. Here, we study the two most recent collapses in the Dôme chamb...
Article
Full-text available
Why recent large earthquakes caused shaking stronger than shown on earthquake hazard maps for common return periods is under debate. Explanations include: (1) Current probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) is deficient. (2) PSHA is fine but some map parameters are wrong. (3) Low-probability events consistent with a map sometimes occur. This i...
Article
The Grote Brogel Fault (GBF) is a major WNW-ESE striking normal fault in Belgium that diverges westward from the NW-SE striking western border fault system of the Roer Valley Graben. The GBF delimits the topographically higher Campine Block from the subsiding Roer Valley Graben, and is expressed in the Digital Terrain Model (DTM) by relief gradient...
Article
This work involves updating the evaluation of seismic hazard in Northeast Algeria by a probabilistic approach. This reassessment attempts to resolve inconsistencies between seismic zoning in regional building codes and is further motivated by the need to refine the input data that are used to evaluate seismic hazard scenarios. We adopted a seismote...
Article
Full-text available
Late Quaternary separation of Britain from mainland Europe is considered to be a consequence of spillover of a large proglacial lake in the Southern North Sea basin. Lake spillover is inferred to have caused breaching of a rock ridge at the Dover Strait, although this hypothesis remains untested. Here we show that opening of the Strait involved at...
Poster
In the first months of 2007, the Aysén region in southern Chile was affected by a seismic swarm with more than 7,200 recorded earthquakes. Its largest earthquake (M 6.2) occurred in April, and had its epicenter in Aysén fjord. Ground shaking intensities became so high (up to MMI IX) that hundreds of onshore mass movements were triggered, several of...
Article
Our knowledge about large earthquakes in stable continental regions comes from studies of faults that generated historical surface rupturing earthquakes or were identified by their recent imprint in the morphology. Here, we evaluate the co-seismic character and movement history of the Rauw fault in Belgium, which lacks geomorphological expression a...
Article
In probabilistic seismic-hazard assessment for stable continental regions (SCRs), the maximum magnitude Mmax truncating the earthquake magnitude–frequency distribution is commonly based on Bayesian updating of a global prior distribution derived from the distribution of observed Mmax in superdomains (groups of tectonically similar domains). We use...
Presentation
The assumed magnitude of the largest future earthquakes, Mmax, is crucial in assessing seismic hazard, especially for critical facilities like nuclear power plants. Absent any theoretical basis, estimates are made using various methods and often prove far too low, as for the 2011 Tohoku, Japan, earthquake. Estimating Mmax is particularly challengin...
Article
Full-text available
On 1580 April 6 one of the most destructive earthquakes of northwestern Europe took place in the Dover Strait (Pas de Calais). The epicentre of this seismic event, the magnitude of which is estimated to have been about 6.0, has been located in the offshore continuation of the North Artois shear zone, a major Variscan tectonic structure that travers...
Presentation
Estimating Mmax, the assumed magnitude of the largest future earthquakes expected on a fault or in an area, involves large uncertainties. No theoretical basis exists to infer Mmax because even where we know the long-term rate of motion across a plate boundary fault, or the deformation rate across an intraplate zone, neither predict how strain will...
Poster
Defining area or fault sources to assess seismic hazard is a difficult and often subjective task in low-seismicity regions. Smoothed or gridded seismicity is a method that has been developed to derive the spatial seismicity pattern in a more objective way, based only on known seismicity and not requiring assumption of source geometries. Smoothed se...
Chapter
Full-text available
We first provide a brief overview of the evolution of seismic hazard assessment in Belgium, followed by a comparison of the current official seismic hazard map used to define the seismic zonation of Belgium in the framework of Eurocode-8 with the corresponding map from the European SHARE project. The general pattern of the PGA spatial distribution...
Presentation
Full-text available
On April 6th, 1580 one of the most destructive earthquakes that have occurred in north-western Europe in historical times took place in the Dover Strait (Pas de Calais). The epicentre of this seismic event, whose magnitude is estimated to be about 6.0, has been located near the offshore continuation of the North Artois Shear zone, a major Variscan...
Article
Full-text available
Spécial tremblement de Terre de Liège du 8 novembre 1983: trente ans après: le réseau belge de surveillance sismique depuis 1985.
Poster
Full-text available
The Lower Rhine Graben (LRG) is an active tectonic structure in intraplate NW Europe. It is characterized by NW-SE oriented normal faults, and moderate but rather continuous seismic activity. Probabilistic seismic hazard assessments (PHSA) in this region have hitherto been based on area source models, in which the LRG is modeled as a single or a sm...
Article
The Lower Rhine Graben (LRG) straddling the border zone of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany, is an active tectonic structure in continental Northwest Europe. It is characterized by northwest–southeast oriented normal faults, and moderate but rather continuous seismic activity. Many faults have been mapped in the LRG, but so far a model of faul...
Article
Full-text available
The North Anatolian Fault is a ca. 1200-km-long, right-lateral, strike-slip fault that forms the northern boundary of the Anatolian plate. A damaging sequence of earthquakes ruptured almost the entire fault in the twentieth century. This study adds to the growing number of paleoseismic investigations of the 350-km-long 1939 Erzincan earthquake-rupt...
Article
Full-text available
More than 25 years have passed since the definition of Active Tectonics as "tectonic movements that are expected to occur within a future time span of concern to society", formulated in a milestone book by the National Research Council on this topic (Studies in Geophysics, Active Tectonics, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. 1986), and those...
Article
Deformation along the northern edge of the westward-moving Anatolian plate is concentrated along the North Anatolian fault. This northward-arching fault extends from the Karliova triple junction in the east, ~1500 km into the Aegean Sea in the west. A sequence of twentieth-century earthquakes ruptured the fault, displaying a spatio temporal pattern...
Article
The North Anatolian Fault (NAF) is a right-lateral plate boundary fault that arcs across northern Turkey for ˜1500 km. Almost the entire fault progressively ruptured in the 20th century, its cascading style indicating that stress from one fault rupture triggers fault rupture of adjacent segments. Using published paleoseismic investigations, this st...
Article
The North Anatolian Fault (NAF) is a right-lateral strike-slip plate boundary fault that arcs across northern Turkey for ~1500km. Almost the entire fault progressively ruptured in the 20th century, its cascading style indicating that stress from one fault rupture triggers fault rupture of adjacent segments. Using published, and soon to be published...
Article
Full-text available
The North Anatolian fault (NAF) is a similar to 1500 km long, arcuate, dextral strike-slip fault zone in northern Turkey that extends from the Karliova triple junction to the Aegean Sea. East of Bolu, the fault zone exhibits evidence of a sequence of large (M(w) > 7) earthquakes that occurred during the twentieth century that displayed a migrating...
Article
Evaluating the maximal magnitude and the recurrence of large earthquakes depends on where and how the strain is released in the lithosphere. Therefore, to characterize the long term seismic activity in northwest Europe, we evaluated and compared the strain accumulated by the known seismic activity with that observed in the recent geological records...
Article
In 2005, a trench was opened for palaeoseismological analysis near the village of Rotem (Maas valley, NE Belgium). The trench exposed the Geleen fault, a branch of the Feldbiss fault zone of the Lower Rhine graben system. The latter is one of the most active tectonic structures in NW Europe north of the Alps. The sedimentary record in the trench ma...
Article
The North Anatolian Fault is well-known for its remarkable sequence of westward propagating earthquakes of magnitude greater than 7, which occurred between 1939 and 1999. In the last decades, numerous studies have focused on this active fault to further characterize its seismic behavior. Paleoseismic data (see EGU presentation: Paleo-earthquake tim...
Article
The North Anatolian Fault (NAF) traces from the Karilova Triple Junction in the east 1400km into the Aegean Sea in the west, forming a northwardly convex arch across northern Turkey. In the 20th century the NAF ruptured in an approximate east to west migrating sequence of large, destructive and deadly earthquakes. A primary question remains unclear...
Article
Evaluating the maximum magnitude and the recurrence of large earthquakes depend on where and how the strain is released in the lithosphere. Therefore, to characterize the long term seismic activity in northwest Europe (NWE), we evaluated and compared the strain accumulated by the known seismic activity with that observed in the recent geological re...
Poster
Full-text available
The Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB) is responsible for the seismic activity monitoring in Belgium. For this purpose the ROB operates a network of 24 seismic stations. In addition 18 accelerographs have been installed since 2001 in the most seismic active zones. Seismometers allow detecting and localizing any earthquake of magnitude larger than 1...
Article
Full-text available
The North Anatolian Fault (NAF) traces from the Karilova Triple Junction in the east 1400km into the Aegean Sea in the west, forming a northwardly convex arch across northern Turkey. In the 20th century the NAF ruptured in an approximate east to west migrating sequence of large, destructive and deadly earthquakes. This migrating sequence suggests a...
Article
Full-text available
An automatic felt earthquake alert and report system, B-FEARS, was developed around the Belgian seismic network allowing seismologists to provide the authorities, the media and the public with information on local felt earthquakes a few minutes after their occurrence. Their magnitude is sometimes as small as ML = 0.6. This system is based on the an...
Conference Paper
The North Anatolian Fault (NAF) is a dextral strike-slip plate-boundary fault zone extending ~1400 km in an arc across northern Turkey. We opened a paleoseismic trench ~2.7 km NW of Destek village on a segment which ruptured (for ~280 km) in the 1943 Ladik Earthquake (Mw:7.7). Sediments exposed in the trench yielded information on the timing of at...
Article
We analyzed thin sections from two palaeoseismic trenches across the low-slip-rate Geleen Fault in the Belgian Maas River valley to help identifying the most recent large palaeoearthquake on this fault segment. In the first trench we sampled silty sediment below and above a prehistoric stone pavement that was supposedly at or near the surface at th...
Article
Full-text available
In a detailed site survey for paleoseismic trenching, we applied shallow geophysical prospecting techniques, including ground-penetrating radar GPR, electric resistivity tomography ERT, and resistivity mapping to identify, locate, and visualize in 3D the Geleen fault, an active normal fault bordering the Roer Valley graben in northeast Belgium. Bec...
Chapter
Full-text available
We provide a synthesis of the long-term earthquake activity in the region of Northwest Europe between the Lower Rhine Embayment and the southern North Sea. Re-evaluated historical earthquake and present day seismological data indicate that much of the known seismic activity is concentrated in the Roer Graben. Nevertheless, the three strongest known...
Article
The archaeological site of Sagalassos (SW Turkey) is located in a region characterized by the absence of any significant recent seismic activity, contrary to adjacent regions. However, the assessment of earthquake-related damage at the site suggests that the earthquakes that have been demonstrated to have struck this Pisidian city in ca. AD 500 and...
Article
[1] Seventy-five years after the destructive Chirpan earthquake of 14 April 1928, we conducted a paleoseismologic study of the causative fault combining a review of contemporary literature, geomorphology, geophysical prospecting, and trenching. We reidentified the fault scarp in the field, and mapped it over a distance of 12.5 km. Geophysical profi...
Article
This paper investigates hydrological processes and their influence on gravity at the underground Membach station (eastern Belgium), where absolute (AG) and superconducting (SG) gravity measurements have been performed since 1996. Seasonal and short term effects are observed. The 3 muGal seasonal effect reflects long-wavelength component of annual c...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Investigations on paleoseismicity are an important part of seismic hazard assessment in the Upper Thracian Depression as one of the most seismically active areas in Bulgaria. The surface rupture of Popovitsa M 7.1 earthquake on April 18, 1928 referrers to an oblique fault from Maritsa fault zone. Further in the paper, the activated part of this fau...