A detailed analysis of microseismicity in Samos and Kusadasi (Eastern Aegean Sea) areas

A detailed investigation of microseismicity and fault plane solutions are used to determine the current tectonic activity of the prominent zone of seismicity near Samos Island and Kusadasi Bay. The activation of fault populations in this complex strike-slip and normal faulting system was investigated by using several thousand accurate earthquake locations obtained by applying a double-difference location method and waveform cross-correlation, appropriate for areas with relatively small seismogenic structures. The fault plane solutions, determined by both moment tensor waveform inversions and P-wave first motion polarities, reveal a clear NS trending extension direction, for strike slip, oblique normal and normal faults. The geometry of each segment is quite simple and indicates planar dislocations gently dipping with an average dip of 40–45°, maintaining a constant dip through the entire seismogenic layer, down to 15 km depth.     

A combined methodology to assess the intrinsic vulnerability of aquifers to pollution from agrochemicals

The groundwater vulnerability indices are valuable tools for the development of agrochemicals management strategies based on environmental/agricultural policies. The groundwater vulnerability methods of LOS, SINTACS, DRASTIC, Pesticide DRASTIC, GOD and AVI were applied for the agricultural fields of Sarigkiol basin (Northern Greece). The results of the aforementioned methods were examined and discussed in order to show how the dissimilarities in the vulnerability assessment approaches may become an advantage. The results of the methods were used to propose a combined conceptual approach which adds another two dimensions (depth and time) in the current two-dimensional vulnerability mapping (longitude, latitude) procedures. The LOS method provided information about the intrinsic vulnerability of the topsoil (30 cm) to water (+conservative pollutants) and nitrogen losses, and the AVI method described the vulnerability of the unsaturated zone to allow pollutants to reach the aquifer while the aquifer vulnerability was analysed using SINTACS, DRASTIC, Pesticide DRASTIC and GOD. In this study, the results of the SINTACS method were found more accurate to describe the local aquifer conditions. The final conceptual approach provided a stratified vulnerability (dimension of depth) of the overall hydrogeologic system using LOS for the topsoil, AVI for unsaturated zone and SINTACS for the aquifer. The dimension of time was introduced by the LOS and AVI methods, which provide quantitative results in time. The use of LOS method also highlighted the basic limitation of the other methods to describe the potential contribution to pollution of areas (especially upland areas) which are out of the aquifer boundaries.     

Labour market flexibility in UK regions, 1979–1998

Despite the centrality of the issue of labour market flexibility, attempts to consistently measure levels of flexibility, either within or across countries, have been remarkably scarce. This paper makes a significant contribution towards filling this gap by presenting a set of labour market flexibility indicators for the UK. Derived from survey-data sources, the indexes relate directly to theoretical considerations on the issue of flexibility and cover a 20-year period (1979–1998) at sub-national detail (Standard Statistical Regions). Examination of their temporal evolution and regional variation reveals a number of interesting findings, most notably that increases in flexibility have not been uniform across space and that persistent regional differences exist in functional specialisations in flexibility with the most significant pattern of regional differentiation being not in the levels of (overall) flexibility but in the types of flexible arrangements that prevail in each region.     

Deformation patterns associated with the M5.9 Athens (Greece) earthquake of 7 September 1999

The static displacement field of the Athens 1999 earthquake has been numerically modeled by a BEM method and analysed from SAR interferometry images with compatible results: (a) for a fault that reaches the surface the subsidence field coincides with the hangingwall domain of the Fili neotectonic normal fault with maximum amplitude, d _max, 5.5–7 cm, which is consistent with the possibly co-seismic displacement of 6–10 cm observed in the field, the average fault dislocation of 5–8 cm found by the application of circular source models, and the displacement up to 6 cm predicted by empirical relations between magnitude and displacement; the field of uplift covers the footwall domain of the fault with d _max1.5 cm;d gradually decreases with distance from the fault at a gradient of 0.4 cm/km, (b) for a blind fault d _max is only 1.8 and 0.3 cm in the hangingwall and footwall, respectively, and the decay gradient becomes 0.15 cm/km, (c) the total deformation area is 15 km × 15 km and the Fili fault, with a preferred mean dip of 60°, constitutes the natural boundary between the subsidence and uplift areas. The macroseismic field pattern is similar with that of the static ground deformation. The majority of intensity values VI (MM and EMS-98 scales), are distributed within the hangingwall of the Fili fault, while the highest intensities (VIII and IX) concentrate very close to the Fili fault within its hangingwall domain. A gradual decrease of the intensities with the distance from the Fili fault is evident. Because of the similarity between the intensity distribution pattern and the static ground deformation pattern, we make the hypothesis that the latter predicts well enough the main characteristics of the former although the ground displacement is dominated by relatively low frequency as compared to the ground acceleration.