News

Participation in 17^th International Congress of the Geological Society of Greece, 28-31 May, 2025 – Mytilene, Greece:

• Gkogkas, K., Papazachos, C., Chatzis, N., Vamvakaris, D., Karagianni, E., Ventouzi, C., Vellis, A., Anterriotis-Kalpakidis, N., Madelis, D., Paradisopoulou, P., Aidona, E., Pikridas, Ch. – SantoArray: Densifying station coverage in Santorini amidst the Amorgos-Anydros earthquake swarm crisis

We gave 3 presentations describing various methods and research issues conducted in the Department. Active and passive seismic research (Wojciech Czuba and Piotr Środa), followed by a new method of passive research developed by Kostas Gkogkas. In addition, We demonstrated operational (recording tremors) seismic stations. It was possible to see the effects of stomping 🙂

A new volume in the series In Memoriam is dedicated to the memory of Professor Aleksander Guterch, who passed away almost a year ago. The Eminent Scientist is recalled by his colleagues and friends. The publication is available here.

• On May 7-9, our Department organized a workshop on preparation for the publication “Lithospheric structure along wide-angle seismic profile SHIELD’21 in the central part of Ukraine”. The meeting was attended by: dr hab. Anna Murovskaya (IGF NANU), dr hab. Tamara Yegorova (IGF NANU), prof. dr hab. Paweł Aleksandrowski (PIG-PIB), dr. hab. Piotr Środa (IGF PAS), dr. hab. Wojciech Czuba (IGF PAS), prof. dr hab. Tomasz Janik (IGF PAS)

• On March 12-15th, 2024, dr hab. Piotr Środa and dr Julia Rewers participated in the “AdriaArray Workshop 2024”, which took place at the University of Sofia in Bulgaria. The workshop focused on the ongoing “AdriaArray” passive seismic experiment. Issues regarding the current transmission of seismic data, their archiving and quality control, as well as plans for data pre-processing were discussed.

On 28 December, Professor Alexander Guterch passed away.

The funeral Mass was held on January 3 at 12:30 in the church of Saint Joseph the Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Sękowa.

The Holy Mass for the intention of the Professor was held on 5 January at 18:00 in the Church of the Annunciation of the Lord on Gorlicka Street in Warsaw.

With deep sadness and regret we received the news that Prof. Dr. Aleksander Guterch, an outstanding geophysicist, passed away on 28 December 2023, at the age of 87. Prof. Aleksander Guterch was for almost all his professional life associated with our Institute, where he started working in 1963. For more than 40 years, he headed the Deep Structures Laboratory and then the Department of Seismic Lithospheric Research.

The Institute of Geophysics, University of Warsaw, was his primary affiliation but for almost all his professional life was associated with Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, where he started working in 1963. For more than 40 years, he headed the Deep Structures Laboratory and then the Department of Seismic Lithospheric Research. Around him, he built a strong scientific team for seismic studies of the Earth’s crust and upper mantle. He was tutor and adviser for young people, graduate students and doctors.

In the years 1997 – 2003 Aleksander Guterch was organizer or co-organizer and active participant in the great project of seismic research of the deep crustal structures and the lower lithosphere in Central Europe, from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic Sea. These were great refraction seismic experiments commonly known as POLONAISE’97 (Polish Litosphere Onsets – An International Seismic Experiment, 1997) CELEBRATION 2000 (Central European Litospheric Experiment Based on Refraction, 2000), Sudetes 2003, GRUNDY 2003, and ALPS 2002 projects. All the main geological structures of the study area have been covered by a system of modern seismic profiles, with a total length of about 20000 km. The research was carried out in cooperation with 35 scientific and industrial institutions from 15 European countries as well as the USA and Canada. A summary of the results was presented in the publication Crustal and lithospheric structures between the Alps and East European Craton from long-range controlled source seismic experiments, in: Gerald Schubert (editor in chief) Treatise on Geophysics, 2nd edition, vol. 1, Oxford: Elsevier; 2015, p. 557-586, authored by A. Guterch, M. Grad, G.R. Keller, and E. Brückl.

Aleksander Guterch did not limit his scientific interests to the area of Poland and Central Europe but also to other European countries as Finland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. He also actively participated in seismic lithosphere studies of the polar regions in the Arctic and Antarctic − organized in 1976 – 2010 by the Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences. Six geophysical expeditions to the Arctic were organized jointly with the scientific institutions of Norway, Germany, Japan and the USA, and five expeditions went to West Antarctica. The results, achieved with the active participation of Aleksander Guterch, resulted in significant publications.

Aleksander Guterch’s scientific achievements are significant. He is an author or co-author of about 250 publications, mainly in international journals and monographs. The importance of the results of his research is evidenced by numerous citations of his works (Scopus >4000) and the Hirsh index 49.

Professor was leading many scientific projects and programs in Poland. He was a full member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, member of Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, member of the Academia Europaea, a member of the Warsaw Scientific Society, the Polish Geophysical Society, an honorary member of the Hungarian Society of Geophysicists, as well as a member of many national and international Scientific Committees and Associations. He was also the winner of many awards and distinctions, as well as the holder of several state decorations, including: Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1973), Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (1998) and the Bene Merito honorary badge (2015). In 2018, during the ceremony of the Institute’s 65th anniversary, he was awarded a medal named after Prof. Adam Dziewoński.

In addition to his outstanding scientific achievements, Alexander Guterch was also interested in the history, mainly the history of cold steel, long-time he was a President and honorary member of the Association of Lovers of Old Arms and Uniforms. He was a holder of the Title of the Honorary Citizenship of the Sękowa Commune.

In the person of the Professor, we lose not only a great scientist, but also a mentor to many of us and a kind colleague.

Aleksander Guterch was born in Sękowa, Poland, on February 16, 1936. He graduated from the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, in 1961, and since 1963 he has been working at the Institute of Geophysics of Polish Academy of Sciences. He received PhD degree in the Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences in 1969.

Aleksander Guterch was survived by his wife Barbara, two daughters and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Participation in EGU General Assembly, 23-28 April 2023, Vienna, Austria:

• W. Czuba, R. Mjelde, Y. Murai, T. Janik. Ocean Bottom Seismic Survey in the Knipovich Ridge area
• T. Janik, V. Starostenko, W. Czuba, P. Środa, A. Murovskaya, T. Yegorova, A. Verpakhovska, K. Kolomiyets, D. Lysynchuk, D. Wójcik, V. Omelchenko, T. Amashukeli, O. Legostaeva, D. Gryn, S. Chulkov. The SHIELD’21 deep seismic experiment
• Konstantinos Michailos, Gyorgy Hetenyi, Matteo Scarponi, Josip Stipčevič, Irene Bianchi, Luciana Bonatto, Wojciech Czuba, Massimo Di Bona, Aladino Govoni, Katrin Hannemann, Tomasz Janik, Daniel Kalmar, Rainer Kind, Frederik Link, Francesco Pio Lucente, Stephen Monna, Caterina Montuori, Stefan Mroczek, Anne Paul, Claudia Piromallo, Jaroslava Plomerova, Julia Rewers, Simone Salimbeni, Frederik Tilmann, Piotr Środa, Jerome Vergne, and the AlpArray-PACASE Working Group. Moho depths beneath the European Alps: a homogeneously processed map and receiver functions database
• Shubhasmita Biswal and Sushil Kumar. Crustal structure beneath the Western Himalayas from Surface wave dispersion analysis
• Somayeh Abdollahi, Piotr Środa, Taghi Shirzad, and AniMaLS Working Group. Ambient Noise Tomography Analysis in the Polish Sudetes: Preliminary results
• Teresa Ninivaggi, Giulio Selvaggi, Salvatore Mazza, Marilena Filippucci, Fabrizio Tursi, and Wojciech Czuba. Evidence of water transport in the Earth’s mantle from an Undetected Seismic Phase in Waveforms from Southern Tyrrhenian (Italy) intermediate-depth and Deep Earthquakes
• Workshop on AdriaArray, Dubrovnik, Croatia, 3–5 April 2023.
  • Janik T., and Working Groups. Wide-angle reflection and refraction (WARR) velocity models of the crust and upper mantle for north-estern part of the Adria Array
  • Czuba W., Środa P., Janik T., Mendecki M., Malinowski S.P., Rewers J., Abdollahi S., Adria Array Project in Poland

Presentation during Baltec grant final meeting, 25-26 October 2022, Warsaw, Poland:

• Wójcik, D., Janik, T., Ponikowska, M., Mazur, S., Skrzynik, T., Malinowski, M., Hübscher, C. Baltec grant final meeting, Wójcik D., Janik T., Deep structure of the Teisseyre-Tornquist Zone from modelling of the OBS data

Presentation during ORFEUS Annual Observatory Meeting and Workshop, 6-7 October 2022, Potsdam, Germany:

• Czuba W., Środa P., Janik T., Mendecki M., Malinowski S.P., Rewers J., Abdollahi S., Adria Array Project in Polan

• Since July to December 2022, we have made some technical improvements on the stations deployed in the frame of the Polish part of the PACASE project.

• Technical Assistant, Erwin Szypuła works since June
• Monika Bociarska has been on maternity leave since June

• Participation in the EGU General Assembly 2022, 9-11 march 2022, Vienna, Austria (on-line):
  • Janik T., Wójcik D. Two-dimensional gravity and magnetic model along a new WARR profile in the transition zone from the Precambrian to Palaeozoic platform in the southern Baltic
• Presentation during 19th Symposium Tectonic, Structural Geology and Geology of Crystalline Rocks (TSK19) 07.-13.03.2022. Halle, Germany:
  • Paweł Aleksandrowski, Andrzej Głuszyński, Tomasz Janik, Vitaly Starostenko, Tamara Yegorova, Wojciech Czuba, Piotr Środa, Anna Murovskaya, Khrystyna Zajats, James Mechie, Katerina Kolomiyets, Dmytro Lysynchuk, Dariusz Wójcik, Victor Omelchenko, Olga Legostaieva, Anatoly Tolkunov, Tatiana Amashukeli, Dmytro Gryn, Serhii Chulkov. Deep structure of the East European Craton at the transition from Sarmatia to Fennoscandia as interpreted from the TTZ-South seismic profile (SE Poland to Ukraine)

• Mgr.inż. Arkadiusz Tokarz, Technical Assistant (works since May to December)
• Participation in AGU Fall Meeting (on-line)
  • Wójcik D., Czuba W., Janik T., Schlindwein V., Schmid F., Mjelde R., Murai Y.
    Structure of the Knipovich Ridge Based on Seismic Investigations Projects KNIPAS & KNIPSEIS (poster)
  • Janik T., Starostenko V., Aleksandrowski P., Yegorova T., Czuba W., Środa P., Murovskaya A., Zajats K., Mechie J., Kolomiyets K., Lysynchuk D., Wójcik D., Omelchenko V., Legostaieva O., Głuszyński A., Tolkunov A., Amashukeli T., Gryn D., Chulkov S. 
    TTZ-South deep seismic profile from western Ukraine to southeastern Poland – crustal structure along the Teisseyre-Tornquist Zone at the transition from Sarmatia to Fennoscandia segments of the East European Craton and into the Palaeozoic Platform (download poster)

• Despite many objective adversities, with a one-year delay, it was a great achievement to conduct deep seismic soundings along the SHIELD’21 profile in Ukraine at the turn of July and August (22 July – 9 August) 2021. The experiment was carried out on the initiative and in cooperation with colleagues from the Institute of Geophysics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kiev and Lviv. The profile crossed the Ukrainian shield from west to east, from the border with Romania to the border with Russia, about 650 km long in total. Ten sources generating seismic energy (explosives from 300 to 800 kg of TNT) have been placed along the profile. The depth of the holes was close to 30 m. The largest shots were located close to the profile ends. Shot times were recorded using GPS devices and, simultaneously, by additional seismic recorders located close to the shot points. Data acquisition was accomplished using 260 mobile single-component seismic recorders (100 Reftek 125-Texan and 160 DSS-CUBE) with 4.5 Hz geophones and 100 Hz sampling rate. Recorders were deployed at spacings of ~2.5 km, 90% of them belonged to the Department of Lithospheric Research.
• Despite the pandemic, a team from Poland participated in the measurements, setting up the equipment on the most difficult, due to the highly varied topography, 200 km south-west section of the profile. Two employees of the Lithospheric Research Department, Dariusz Wójcik and Arkadiousz Tokarz, have been collecting data using two IGF PAN off-road vehicles and with the support of two colleagues from IGF NANU. The base of this group was located in a small village next to the Dniester River, 10 km from Kamieniec Podolski.

• Dr Somayeh Abdollahi was employed as a Research Assistant in the Departament