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Description:
Northern Germany is an intraplate region and has been regarded as a low seismicity area for a long time. However, historic sources show the occurrence of several significant natural earthquakes in northern and central Germany since the 10th century. In recent years natural earthquakes as well as earthquakes in the vicinity of active gas fields, likely to have been associated with the recovery of hydrocarbons, have been repeatedly instrumentally recorded in northern Germany. In central Germany, which is exposed to a higher earthquake hazard than northern Germany, historically and instrumentally recorded earthquakes accumulate in a N-S trending zone. However, the seismic record of Germany is limited and solely goes back to the year 800 CE. Long periods of seismic quiescence alternating with fault activity for a short geological period of time can falsify the seismic hazard of an intraplate region. Seismic hazard can be underestimated because of seismic quiescence or overestimated because of the detection of periodical clustering, migrating and infrequent seismicity. Therefore, palaeoseismology is the missing link for an accurate assessment of the seismic hazard estimation of a continental low strain area like Germany. Northern and central Germany were repeatedly affected by glaciations and periglacial processes during the Pleistocene. The main difficulty is to distinguish the vast glaciotectonic deformation structures that are present in northern Germany from neotectonic deformation structures. Processes like cryoturbation, depositional loading in water saturated sediments and rapid rates of deposition can generate soft-sediment deformation structures that may also be mistaken for earthquake-induced structures. The analysis of neotectonic activity in northern and central Germany is challenging because recently observed vertical crustal movements along NWSE- striking faults do not commonly correspond to visible morphological features and fault scarps are rapidly destroyed by climatic conditions. Seven WNW-ESE ...