Abstract In 1886, a large earthquake (∼M6.9–M7.3) rocked the Summerville-Charleston South Carolina area along the southeastern coast of North America. The largest east coast earthquake in North America, the earthquake caused massive damage to the cities and left ∼100 people dead. No surface rupture has ever been located; however, ongoing seismicity and damage from the 1886 earthquake has helped scientists to locate the active faults at depth and to identify potential surface offsets. The first day of the field trip will look at the damage from the earthquake as a means of understanding more about the mechanics of the earthquake. As the field trip moves into downtown Charleston, the damage will be examined as a proxy for how earthquakes cause buildings to fail and the type of damage a future earthquake could cause. The ongoing seismic activity along the suspected causal faults suggests that the earthquake risk in the Summerville-Charleston area remains high, and so the second day of the field trip will focus on the potential effects of a moderate to large earthquake in the region of the 1886 earthquake. One of the unique features of the Charleston-Summerville area is the high potential for widespread liquefaction and damage to the many bridges in the area. Therefore, Day 2 will focus on the potential for damage from a major earthquake on bridges and highly liquefiable sites by visiting a bridgeport area and then a barrier island. The visit to the barrier island highlights one of the main problems in Charleston in the event of an earthquake, the isolation of communities, with over 720 bridges and many more culverts in the area it is expected that people will be isolated in small communities for long periods of time.

Abstract Abich and Barth came from a North German bourgeois background and received a strict religious education. Later, when studying at the University of Berlin, both came under the strong influence of the geographer Carl Ritter and of his Pietist family. Abich became the doyen of Caucasus geology, and engaged in intensive and often perilous fieldwork in the region between 1842 and 1876. The help he received during his first two years in the field convinced him that it was God's will for him to bring this work to completion. His trust in the Bible was so firm that, after setting foot on the summit of Mount Ararat, he asked himself where exactly Noah's ark might have landed. Barth's most outstanding achievement was the exploration of the central Sahara and southern Sudan between 1849 and 1855. Here he worked mostly alone. In relationship to Muslims, he demonstrated an uncompromising and therefore convincing Christian faith. He survived the dangers of the desert and various illnesses with resilience, which he attributed to his unshakable faith.

Abstract During the climactic Plinian phase of the 1886 basaltic eruption of Tarawera, New Zealand, vents along the 17 km fissure erupted explosively with a wide range of dispersal. The 8 km long segment of the fissure which cuts across Mt Tarawera contains approximately 50 vents and includes the sources of both the weakest and most intense activity of the 5 h eruption. We seek to explain (1) what allowed the intensity to reach Plinian values that are rarely achieved by basaltic magma, and (2) what caused adjacent vents to erupt with very different dispersals and intensities despite identical magma composition. All juvenile clasts studied from this eruption have relatively high vesicle number densities ( c . 10 6 cm -3 ) and exceptionally high microlite crystallinities (60–90% of the groundmass), unlike the typical products of weaker Hawaiian and Strombolian basaltic explosions. Textural analysis of juvenile pyroclasts suggests that all the erupted magma experienced the same decompression history through to fragmentation. The Tarawera magma experienced a sudden, large, decompression producing nucleation of bubbles and microlites. The high microlite content was the primary means by which the magma’s viscosity increased, which kept the bubble population well coupled to the magma and allowed it to fragment explosively in a manner analogous to that postulated for silicic Plinian eruptions. The main differences at different sites along the Mt Tarawera fissure segment are in the amount and grain size of the wall rock lithic component of the deposits. We suggest that conduit/vent erosion and incorporation of significant volumes of cold wall rock into theeruptive jet prevented some vents from achieving Plinian intensity. Bubble size analysis suggests that coalescence ledto open-system degassing, ending the Plinian phase.