SUMMARY High seismicity rates in eastern Indonesia occur due to the complex interaction of several tectonic plates which resulted in two deadly, destructive earthquake sequences that occurred in Lombok Island and the city of Palu, Sulawesi in 2018. The first sequence began in July with an Mw 6.4 event near Lombok, culminating in an Mw 7.0 event 8 d later. This was then followed by a nearby Mw 6.9 event 12 d later. Approximately 1000 km to the northeast, a separate sequence began several weeks later near Palu where an Mw 7.5 event occurred that triggered a tsunami. In this study, we present hypocentre relocations for both earthquake sequences as well as all other regional earthquakes in eastern Indonesia. The relocations were performed using a teleseismic double-difference relocation method and arrival times for P and S waves from stations at local, regional, and teleseismic distances. The catalogue and phase data were taken from the Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG) of Indonesia and the International Seismological Centre (ISC) for the period of April 2009 through November 2018. The relocated catalogue provides an improved view of seismicity in eastern Indonesia over the study period, sharpening locations and interpretations of seismogenic features throughout the region. In the Lombok area, the relocated earthquakes clearly show a backarc thrust to the north of the Sunda-Banda Arc transition zone. The relocated aftershocks show that the destructive Mw 7.0 and Mw 6.9 earthquakes of the Lombok sequence ruptured two different regions: The Mw 7.0 earthquake propagated westward, whereas the Mw 6.9 earthquake propagated eastward. The entire sequence of Lombok earthquakes was most likely started by the Mw 6.4 event as the initial event or foreshock, which then triggered backarc thrusts on both sides. Several weeks later and far to the northeast, the Mw 7.5 Palu earthquake occurred along the Palu-Koro Fault, filling a seismic gap that had not ruptured in an Mw 6.0 event or larger since at least 1900. The distribution of aftershocks indicates that the northern part of the Palu-Koro Fault has lower relative seismicity rates than the southern part at shallow depths, and that off fault aftershocks are mostly located to the east of the Palu-Koro Fault.

Java Island, the most populated island of Indonesia, is prone to landslide disasters. Their occurrence and impact have increased mainly as the result of natural factors, aggravated by human imprint. This paper is intended to analyse: (1) the spatio-temporal variation of landslides in Java during short term and long-term periods, and (2) their causative factors such as rainfall, topography, geology, earthquakes, and land-use. The evaluation spatially and temporally of historical landslides and consequences were based on the landslide database covering the period of 1981 – 2007 in the GIS environment. Database showed that landslides distributed unevenly between West Java (67 %), Central Java (29 %) and East Java (4 %). Slope failures were most abundant on the very intensively weathered zone of old volcanic materials on slope angles of 30O – 40O. Rainfall threshold analysis showed that shallow landslides and deep-seated landslides were triggered by rainfall events of 300 – 600 mm and > 600 mm respectively of antecedent rainfall during 30 consecutive days, and many cases showed that the landslides were not always initiated by intense rainfall during the landslide day. Human interference plays an important role in landslide occurrence through land conversion from natural forest to dryland agriculture which was the host of most of landslides in Java. These results and methods can be used as valuable information on the spatio-temporal characteristics of landslides in Java and their relationship with causative factors, thereby providing a sound basis for landslide investigation in more detail.

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On September 28, 2018, the Mw 7.5 earthquake occurred in Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. This earthquake produced strong tremors, landslides, liquefaction and a tsunami and caused thousands of fatalities and damaged houses and infrastructure. We have relocated 386 of the 554 Palu aftershocks by using the double-difference relocation method (hypoDD) from September 28 to November 22, 2018. The aftershock pattern is consistent with the crustal deformation in the area and generally shows that the events have a NW-SE trending of ~ 200 km in length and ~ 50 km in width. Most of the aftershocks are located to the east of the Palu-Koro Fault Line. Since November 2, 2018, there have been hundreds of swarm earthquakes in the area of Mamasa, West Sulawesi, which is about 230 km south of the city of Palu. Some of these earthquakes were felt, and houses were even damaged. We have relocated 535 of the 556 swarm earthquakes having a magnitude of M 2 to M 5.4. Our results show that the seismicity pattern has a dip that becomes shallower to the west (dipping at a ~ 45° angle) and extends from north to south for a length of ~ 50 km. We also conducted a focal mechanism analysis to estimate the type of fault slip for selected events of an M > 4.5 magnitude. Most of the solutions of the focal mechanism analysis show a normal fault type. This swarm earthquake probably corresponds to the activity of the fault in the local area.

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