Active projects
Amount awarded: 2 664 388,80 €
IP Work Package 5: M. Ortuño. RISKNAT members: M. Ortuño, J. J. Gallego Montoya, R. Pallàs, E. Masana, G. Khazaradze, M. Ollé, J. Molins.
The TREAD project aims to train the next generation of seismic hazard scientists (11 PhD Candidates) to address the challenges of seismic forecasting in complex tectonic contexts in Europe and the Mediterranean. TREAD will establish a new integrative approach to seismic hazard analysis, bridging small-scale laboratory experiments and large-scale observations, whose results are incorporated to implement new seismic hazard assessment approaches. The project involves academic institutions (8) and public and private partners (14) from seven European countries (https://tread-horizon.eu/consortium/). Examples of associated partners include technological enterprises such as TRE-Altmira, IFP-Energie Nouvelles, or the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology (HIF), which complement the PhD training by enrolling TREAD fellows in a doctoral programme, providing training and secondment opportunities. In particular, the UB collaborates with HIF in the development of new protocols for acquiring and processing hyperspectral images from natural and artificial outcrops of paleoseismological interest. The technique is being applied to four different geological Settings: the Eastern Betics (2 sites), the Catalan Coastal Ranges (2 sites), the Pyrenees (1 site) and the Central Apennines (2 sites). The results obtained allow for a better constraint of the paleoearthquake record preserved in bedrock fault scarps, paleolacustrine seismites, and deformed alluvial fans.
Project Website: https://tread-horizon.eu/
Amount Awarded: 278.300€
PIs: R. Pallàs (RISKNAT) and E. Masana (RISKNAT). RISKNAT members: R. Pallàs, E. Masana, M. Ortuño, J. Bordonau, G. Khazaradze, M. Ollé, J. Molins-Vigatà.
The project aims to advance probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA) by integrating geological and geophysical data from active faults in three key regions of eastern Iberia: the Eastern Betic Shear Zone, the High Pyrenees, and the Baix Ebre basin. These regions typify slow-deformation tectonic settings common across western Europe, where high population density contrasts with the very low strain-accumulation rates of active faults, leading to a limited historical perception of seismic hazard. Slow-slip faults are particularly challenging to characterise because their long seismic cycles produce scarce or discontinuous paleoseismic records. As a result, they are often underestimated or overlooked in conventional hazard assessments, despite their capacity to generate damaging earthquakes. To address these limitations, the project combines paleoseismological techniques with advanced geochronological methods—including violet OSL, amino-acid racemization (AAR), cosmogenic nuclide dating, and Bayesian age-modelling—together with geodetic approaches (GPS, InSAR) and geophysical investigations (electrical resistivity tomography, magnetotellurics, ground-penetrating radar, and seismology). This multidisciplinary strategy provides robust constraints on fault slip rates, earthquake chronologies, and detailed fault-source geometries, all of which are critical parameters for improving PSHA in low-strain-rate regions. The datasets generated through this integrated methodology are being incorporated into time-dependent PSHA models to enhance their accuracy, reliability, and ability to represent long-term seismic behaviour in slow-deforming tectonic environments.
Additionally, the project includes outreach and training initiatives aimed at increasing public awareness of seismic risk. These efforts include the development of an educational website specifically designed for teachers (https://sismoiberica.org/) dealing on earthquakes focused on the particularities of the Iberian Peninsula seismicity.
Amount Awarded to ICM-CSIC: 299,962.50 €
PIs: Henning Sten Hansen (AAU), Xavier Garcia (RISKNAT)
SEADITO is developing a suite of socio-ecological methods and tools to be integrated into the European Digital Twin of the Ocean (EU DTO), creating a comprehensive platform to support decision-making aimed at achieving healthy oceans, coastal zones, and inland waters by 2030. At the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM), we are developing an app designed to empower fishermen in managing temporary closures. In addition, we are creating statistical analysis tools to monitor and evaluate benthic marine litter.
Project website: https://seadito.eu/
Amount awarded: 105.000€
PI: O. Margalef (RISKNAT). RISKNAT members: O. Margalef, R. Pallàs, J. Bach.
The HOLOPEAT project seeks to reconstruct the paleoenvironment of four representative peatlands in the Central Pyrenees by integrating chemical and biological proxies (organic compounds, mineral fraction, plant macrofossils, pollen, diatoms, and sedimentary DNA) to understand Holocene ecosystem dynamics, their role in the carbon cycle, hydrological changes, vegetation history, mining impacts, and the onset of human influence. With robust age models enabling record correlations, the results will improve our understanding of Pyrenean landscape evolution and past climate impacts, inform about conservation and management of high-mountain peatlands, and highlight the uniqueness of current global change impacts and the Great Acceleration in these fragile Systems.
Amount awarded: 800 000 €
PIs: Duna Roda-Boluda (RISKNAT) and Benjamin Campforts.
This project will develop an integrated quantitative framework that combines novel analytical data with next-generation numerical modelling to reconstruct—and ultimately predict—how climate change influences alpine landscape evolution and associated geohazards. By tightly coupling empirical measurements with the new POLISHED model, the research will quantify post-glacial erosion, landslide activity, and sediment transport across large spatial and temporal scales, improving process-based understanding of hazard sensitivity in rapidly changing mountain environments. Two complementary PhD projects underpin the innovation: one generates high-resolution erosion and provenance records using advanced cosmogenic and sediment-tracing techniques, while the other develops stochastic landscape simulations that explicitly capture mass-wasting events and sediment routing. Scientifically, the work will advance theory on climate–tectonic–erosion interactions and refine interpretation of sedimentary archives; societally, it will provide better constraints on landslide recurrence and sediment flux responses to warming, informing hazard assessments in economically and environmentally important alpine regions. Outputs—including the open-source POLISHED model—will support future evaluations of climate-driven landscape change and related risks through collaboration with international research and stakeholder communities.