From 24 to 28 August 2026 Tashkent, Uzbekistan, hosted the School of Young Seismologists of the CIS member states. IGES Director Jon Karapetyan gave a lecture on how sedimentary basins shape the damage caused by earthquakes.
The lecture
“Basin effect: transformation of the wave field as a factor of seismic destruction.” J. K. Karapetyan, Li Li, Jian Zhou, Yongzhe Wang, R. K. Karapetyan. Institute of Geophysics and Engineering Seismology after A. Nazarov (Gyumri, Armenia) and Institute of Geophysics, China Earthquake Administration (Beijing, China).
Cities in almost every earthquake-prone country stand on sedimentary basins. A basin changes the seismic waves that pass through it, and this can decide how much a city suffers. The best-known example is the 1988 Spitak earthquake: Gyumri, which stands on the Shirak basin, was hit far harder than Vanadzor, although Vanadzor was closer to the fault.
The lecture showed how the joint Armenia–China observation network records these effects, from weak local shocks to distant earthquakes, and why the basin effect should be taken into account both in building design and in seismic hazard maps.
A memorandum with Uzbekistan
During the school, IGES and the G. A. Mavlyanov Institute of Seismology of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan signed a memorandum of cooperation in joint research. The memorandum was signed by the directors of the two institutes.
Schools like this bring together young researchers who are starting their careers in seismology. For IGES, it is a chance to share Armenia’s experience in seismic monitoring and to keep in touch with colleagues across the region.
