Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Romania's earthquakes


In terms of seismicity,  Romania has a moderate seismic activity, given its geographical position and its closeness to a convergent plate boundary. The Vrancea region, located in the South-Eastern part of the country is especially high in earth quakes and traditionally has been the epicenter of many earth quakes.

Probability of earthquakes:

Romania is situated in a seismically active region and has a history of devastating and deadly earthquakes. The Bucharest area has experienced a number of tremors of varying intensities, and the probability that a severe and damaging earthquake will occur is high. From: http://romania.usembassy.gov/acs/disaster_preparedness.html  
In fact, Bucharest has been named by the British paper "The Guardian" as Europe's earthquake capital. (http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/mar/25/risky-cities-red-equals-danger-in-bucharest-europes-earthquake-capital).


How do we handle earthquakes in Romania?

According to Japan-Romania knowledge transfer for earthquake disaster prevention preparedness of citizens in Bucharest, http://www.iitk.ac.in/nicee/wcee/article/13_2023.pdf, the seismicity of Romania is dominated by the Vrancea intermediate depth earthquakes (as a rule depths between 80 and 160 Km) that affect with high intensities ca. 50 % of the territory. The amounts of elements at the highest risks are large, since the seismic areas cover 65% of the territory, including almost 75% of the population (over 60% in strong seismic zones). The size of actual losses was emphasized by the March 4th, 1977 Vrancea earthquake (M=7.2) as well as by the November 10th, 1940 earthquake (M=7.4). The March 4th, 1977 earthquake was a disaster for Bucharest, due to the concentration of casualties (over 90% of the total 1,570 deaths), collapse of high rise buildings and other large damage, 1.4 billion US dollars.

How do we prevent catastrophes produced by earthquakes in Romania?

Given these tragic events involving devastating loss of human life and after centuries of seismic damaging events, earthquake resistant design codes for buildings were enacted in 1942 as well as provisions to evaluate and rehabilitate existing buildings. A new earthquake design code with a new zoning map began to be enforced in 2004-2005, increasing the demands for rehabilitation of existing buildings.

According to http://www.iitk.ac.in/nicee/wcee/article/13_2023.pdf, the Romanian National Center for Seismic Risk Reduction is involved in:
  • issuance of new technologies for retrofitting the earthquake vulnerable buildings and structures, as well as new codes for seismic resistant design, with a special component for seismic instrumentation of Bucharest and of densely built areas;
  • transfer to specialists state of the art knowledge in the anti-seismic protection domain and issuing documentation regarding the education of the population and knowledge dissemination for preventing risks;
  • development of technical knowledge by training, studies and documentation, seminars, courses and lectures in Romania and abroad, promotion of the international cooperation for seismic risk management, studies and publications in the specific field of activity;
All of the above make for efforts that authorities in Romania are undergoing in order to prevent the horrific catastrophes that happened in 1940 and 1977, respectively.

The latest major earthquake in Romania (M 5.6) occurred on November, 22nd 2014. No victims or significant damage were reported, however the quake was strongly felt in Bucharest and several other parts of the country. See http://www.euronews.com/2014/11/22/earthquake-measuring-56-strikes-romania/

As a side note, earth quake early warning efforts are made available for the entire Europe through the prism of REAKT, according to: http://www.reaktproject.eu/reakt_presentations/Clinton_Zollo_EEW_Europe%281%29.pdf

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Tectonic Plate Boundaries

http://palaeo.webuda.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Harta_Geologica_Romania.gifRomania is a country that has boundaries with the East European Plate (EEP), Moesian microplate (MoP), and Intracarpathian microplate (IaP) which seem to meet into the Vrancea area (South-Eastern part of the country), whose active seismicity has been considered to be due to the presence of a continental unstable transform-transform-compression triple-junction. 
From: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003EAEJA.....5534B
 
(The Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System)

About the Romanian Volcanos

The Romanian volcanoes are active at a convergent plate margin. The map below (from A. Szakracs,I. Seghedi, 1995http://adatbank.transindex.ro/vendeg/htmlk/pdf6015.pdf) shows the volcanic cones and the associated deposits in Calimani-Gurghiu-Hargita mountains.



 

Friday, February 13, 2015

Rocks and minerals found in Romania



Romania has a certain particular richness in terms of rocks and minerals. This post is by no means exhaustive and given that I am no expert on the subject yet, this is just an inventory with nomenclature that I am no expert on and which I found on credible websites housed by prestigious universities in Romania.

Thus, among the native alloys of Romania we can find: iron, arsenic (spheroidal aggregates from Sacaramb and Hondol, Romania) as well as graphite, some diamond as well as samples of      tellurium, in Transylvania (Fata Baii, Alba district, Romania).

From the class of sulfides, sulfosalts and tellurides, Romania is mentioned to present minerals such as: chalcopyrite, sphalerite and galena which were traditionally mined for Cu, Zn and Pb respectively as well as jamesonite and tellurides from Apuseni Mountains: petzite, sylvanite, krennerite and nagyagite.

The Romanian province of Transylvania is especially rich in halides (layers of salt rocks) while the region of Banat has the mineral called fluorite.

Rocks such as quartz (amethyst, rock crystal, smoky quartz etc.) - including fine-grained, i.e. chalcedony (e.g. agate) and massive, i.e. jasper-type varieties - and opal (precious opal, fire opal, silicified wood etc.) are also present in Romania.

With respect to magnetite and hematite category, they were traditionally mined in the Banat region (e.g. Ocna de Fier) and Masca-Baisoara, Cluj district
Rare twin crystals of aragonite were found in Corund, Harghita district. Lively coloured malachites (green) and azurites (blue) also have been identified. Rare borates such as ludwigite, or szaibelyite and kotoite, were discovered in Ocna de Fier (Caras-Severin district), and respectively Baita, Bihor district.

Also, crystals of celestite were found in Copaceni and Cluj whereas barite samples were identified in Baia Mare region.

Minerals such as krautite and villyaellenite were found in Sacaramb, Hunedoara district.
From the category of silicates, Romania has a few rare minerals, among which: gehlenite - the world record of crystal size (15 cm) and tilleyite, both from Vata de Sus, Hunedoara district. Various feldspar rocks (including gem varieties such as amazonite, and labradorite) were also identified in Romania.

With respect to organic minerals, amber was discovered in Colti, Buzau district and Valenii de Munte, Prahova district.

Gold is best represented is the Rosia Montana (Alba district) and other traditional mining areas in the Golden Quadrangle of the Apuseni Mountains (Bucium-Baia de Aries, Brad-Sacaramb, Zlatna-Stanija) and the Baia Mare region (Cavnic).

Limestones (sedimentary rock) and marbles (metamorphic rock), more precisely banded calcite (onyx marble)  were discovered in Corund, Harghita district), as well as several gem varieties of chalcedony (a form of quartz) and opal (mineraloid).

Information was compiled from the following link to the  Museum of Mineralogy hosted by the University of Babes-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca, the second most prestigious national university of 
Romania:  
http://bioge.ubbcluj.ro/MuzeuMin/en/colectii.html

If interested in getting more information about minerals and Mineral Sciences in the Carpathian Mountains (which cross Romania), please refer to the following document about the International Conference on Mineral Sciences in the Carpathians which took place in Miskolc, Hungary, 9-10 March 2006: 
http://www.mineral.hermuz.hu/acta_05/pdf/Acta5_full.pdf

Another credible resource with respect to  mining activities in Romania is the website of the University of Bucharest - Faculty of Geology and Geophysics which lists a series of international scholars and lecturers invited to teach at the university and bring in the latest ideas about oil and shale gas extraction: 
http://www.unibuc.ro/e/facultati/geologie-geofizica/SCIENTIFIC_events.php

As a final note, new oil deposits have been discovered in the Black Sea, to which Romania has an opening. It appears that drilling activities off shore will start in 2020 and preparation are under way to set up oil rigs in the Black Sea.