Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
4730640 Journal of Asian Earth Sciences 2014 11 Pages PDF
Abstract

•We identify typical coastal environments that preserve signs of paleo-tsunamis.•Morphologically isolated locations act as good archives of paleotsunami deposits.•We discuss observations from five sites affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.•The ability to compare storm and tsunami deposits makes this study proficient.•The ages based on sheltered locations overlap with those from transoceanic sites.

The 2004 earthquake left several traces of coseismic land deformation and tsunami deposits, both on the islands along the plate boundary and distant shores of the Indian Ocean rim countries. Researchers are now exploring these sites to develop a chronology of past events. Where the coastal regions are also inundated by storm surges, there is an additional challenge to discriminate between the deposits formed by these two processes. Paleo-tsunami research relies largely on finding deposits where preservation potential is high and storm surge origin can be excluded. During the past decade of our work along the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the east coast of India, we have observed that the 2004 tsunami deposits are best preserved in lagoons, inland streams and also on elevated terraces. Chronological evidence for older events obtained from such sites is better correlated with those from Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, reiterating their usefulness in tsunami geology studies.

Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Earth and Planetary Sciences Geology
Authors
, , ,