Pascale Huyghe

A major question about the Himalaya remains open: does a great earthquake (like the Mw ~ 8.1 1934 earthquake) release all the strain stored by the Tibet–India convergence during the preceding interseismic period and only that strain, or can it also release a background store of energy that remained unreleased through one or more earlier earthquakes and so potentially engender giant events or a relatively random sequence of events? To consider this question, the history of the great earthquakes of the last millennium is investigated here by combining data provided by the historical archives of Kathmandu, trenches through surface ruptures, isoseismal damage mapping, seismites, and the instrumental record. In the Kathmandu basin, the location of the epicenter of the 1934 earthquake was determined from the arrival of high-energy P-waves that caused sedimentary dikes and ground fractures perpendicular to the epicenter azimuth. The epicenter of the Mw ~ 7.6 1833 earthquake can therefore b...

The aim of this paper is to unfold the relationship between the O and C isotope compositions of modern fresh-water mollusc shells and water in order to refine the basis of interpretation for paleoenvironnemental reconstruction in the sub-Himalayan river basins. Large number of mollusc shells and associated host water from both running water and closed body of water were analysed

Sediment derived from erosion of the Himalaya during the Miocene–Pliocene was deposited in the Himalayan foreland basin and is now exposed in the Siwalik Formation between the Main Boundary Thrust and Main Frontal Thrust. These sediments hold important information on orogenic exhumation during this time. In this preliminary study we sampled the middle Siwalik Formation in eastern Nepal along the

Geophysical data acquired in the southeastern Caribbean marine area (CARAMBA survey of the French O/V Atalante) provide new information about the deformation processes occurring in this subduction-to-strike-slip transitions zone. The 65 000 km2 of multibeam ...