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The 2015 Gorkha, Nepal, Earthquake and Himalayan Studies: First Results


Edited by: Hiroe Miyake, Soma Nath Sapkota, Bishal Nath Upreti, Laurent Bollinger, Tomokazu Kobayashi, Hiroshi Takenaka

A devastating earthquake with a moment magnitude of 7.9 struck Nepal on 25 April 2015, resulting in more than 8,000 fatalities. This earthquake has a remarkable seismological feature in that the interplate earthquake occurred just below the inland area, which can offer an invaluable opportunity to deepen our understanding of earthquakes in the collision zone and related disasters. This special issue focuses on multidisciplinary geoscientific research regarding the 2015 Gorkha, Nepal, earthquake and the relevant tectonics along the Indian-Eurasian plate collision zone.

Publication started: 14 December 2015
Publication finished: 6 January 2017

  2. We performed a damage survey of buildings and carried out microtremor observations in the source region of the 2015 Gorkha earthquake. Our survey area spans the Kathmandu valley and areas to the east and north...

    Authors: Masumi Yamada, Takumi Hayashida, Jim Mori and Walter D. Mooney
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2016 68:117
    Content type: Letter Published on:

  3. We propose a reference site for the site effect study in and around the Kathmandu valley, Nepal. The used data were the accelerograms recorded at two stations, DMG and KKA, and velocity seismograms co-recorde...

    Authors: Mukunda Bhattarai, Lok Bijaya Adhikari, Umesh Prasad Gautam, Laurent Bollinger, Bruno Hernandez, Toshiaki Yokoi and Takumi Hayashida
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2016 68:81
    Content type: Full Paper Published on:

  4. The 2015 Gorkha earthquake and its aftershocks caused severe damage mostly in Nepal, while countries around the Himalayan region were warned for decades about large Himalayan earthquakes and the seismic vulner...

    Authors: Hiroaki Kobayashi, Kazuki Koketsu, Hiroe Miyake, Nobuo Takai, Michiko Shigefuji, Mukunda Bhattarai and Soma Nath Sapkota
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2016 68:66
    Content type: Letter Published on:

  5. Strong ground motions from the 2015 Mw 7.8 Gorkha, Nepal, earthquake and its eight aftershocks recorded by a strong-motion seismograph at Kantipath (KATNP), Kathmandu, were analyzed to assess the ground-motion...

    Authors: Yadab P. Dhakal, Hisahiko Kubo, Wataru Suzuki, Takashi Kunugi, Shin Aoi and Hiroyuki Fujiwara
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2016 68:58
    Content type: Letter Published on:

  6. The M7.8 April 25, 2015, Gorkha earthquake in Nepal was produced by a slip on the low-angle Main Himalayan Thrust, a décollement below the Himalaya that emerges at the surface in the south as the Himalayan Fro...

    Authors: Yasuhiro Kumahara, Deepak Chamlagain and Bishal Nath Upreti
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2016 68:53
    Content type: Letter Published on:

  7. Previous studies reported that the 2015 Gorkha earthquake (Mw 7.8), which occurred in Nepal, triggered landslides in mountainous areas. In Kathmandu, earthquake-induced land subsidence was identified by interp...

    Authors: Hiroshi P. Sato and Hiroshi Une
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2016 68:47
    Content type: Full paper Published on:

  10. Large Himalayan earthquakes expose rapidly growing populations of millions of people to high levels of seismic hazards, in particular in northeast India and Nepal. Calibrating vulnerability models specific to ...

    Authors: Soma Nath Sapkota, Laurent Bollinger and Frédéric Perrier
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2016 68:40
    Content type: Letter Published on:

  11. Sedimentary facies and micro-fossil analyses, and AMS14C dating were performed in order to reveal the water-level fall events and draining process of the lake (Paleo-Kathmandu Lake) that existed in the past in t...

    Authors: Harutaka Sakai, Rie Fujii, Misa Sugimoto, Ryoko Setoguchi and Mukunda Raj Paudel
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2016 68:31
    Content type: Frontier letter Published on:

    The Erratum to this article has been published in Earth, Planets and Space 2016 68:122

  12. The characteristics of aftershock activity of the 2015 Gorkha, Nepal, earthquake (Mw 7.8) were evaluated. The mainshock and aftershocks were recorded continuously by the international Kathmandu strong motion s...

    Authors: Masayoshi Ichiyanagi, Nobuo Takai, Michiko Shigefuji, Subeg Bijukchhen, Tsutomu Sasatani, Sudhir Rajaure, Megh Raj Dhital and Hiroaki Takahashi
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2016 68:25
    Content type: Letter Published on:

  13. Ionospheric signatures possibly induced by the Nepal earthquake are investigated far outside the epicentral region in Taiwan (~3700 km distance from the epicenter) and in the Czech Republic (~6300 km distance ...

    Authors: Jaroslav Chum, Jann-Yenq Liu, Jan Laštovička, Jiří Fišer, Zbyšek Mošna, Jiří Baše and Yang-Yi Sun
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2016 68:24
    Content type: Full paper Published on:

  14. The source rupture process of the 2015 Gorkha, Nepal, earthquake was estimated by the joint kinematic source inversion with near-field waveforms, teleseismic waveforms, and geodetic data. The estimated seismic...

    Authors: Hisahiko Kubo, Yadab P. Dhakal, Wataru Suzuki, Takashi Kunugi, Shin Aoi and Hiroyuki Fujiwara
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2016 68:16
    Content type: Letter Published on:

  15. The Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2, “DAICHI-2”) has been observing Nepal with the Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar-2 (PALSAR-2) in response to an emergency request from Sentinel A...

    Authors: Ryo Natsuaki, Hiroto Nagai, Takeshi Motohka, Masato Ohki, Manabu Watanabe, Rajesh B. Thapa, Takeo Tadono, Masanobu Shimada and Shinichi Suzuki
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2016 68:15
    Content type: FULL PAPER Published on:

  17. On 25 April 2015, a large earthquake of Mw 7.8 occurred along the Main Himalayan Thrust fault in central Nepal. It was caused by a collision of the Indian Plate beneath the Eurasian Plate. The epicenter was ne...

    Authors: Nobuo Takai, Michiko Shigefuji, Sudhir Rajaure, Subeg Bijukchhen, Masayoshi Ichiyanagi, Megh Raj Dhital and Tsutomu Sasatani
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2016 68:10
    Content type: Letter Published on:

  18. We have successfully detected widely distributed ground displacements for the 2015 Gorkha earthquake by applying a ScanSAR-based interferometry analysis of Advanced Land Observing Satellite 2 (ALOS-2) L-band data...

    Authors: Tomokazu Kobayashi, Yu Morishita and Hiroshi Yarai
    Citation: Earth, Planets and Space 2015 67:201
    Content type: Frontier letter Published on: