scholarly journals Tsunami scenario triggered by submarine landslide offshore of northern Sumatra Island and its hazard assessment

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haekal Azief Haridhi ◽  
Bor-Shouh Huang ◽  
Kuo-Liang Wen ◽  
Arif Mirza ◽  
Syamsul Rizal ◽  
...  

Abstract. Near the northern border of Sumatra, the right-lateral strike-slip Sumatran Fault Zone splits into two branches and extends into the offshore, as revealed by seismic sounding surveys. However, due to its strike-slip faulting characteristics, the Sumatran Fault Zone’s activity is rarely believed to cause tsunami hazards in this region. According to two reprocessed reflection seismic profiles, the extended Sumatran Fault Zone is strongly associated with chaotic facies, indicating that large submarine landslides have been triggered. Coastal steep slopes and new subsurface characteristics of submarine landslide deposits were mapped using recently acquired high-resolution shallow bathymetry data. Slope stability analysis revealed some targets with steep morphology to be close to failure. In an extreme case, an earthquake of Mw 7 or more occurred, and the strong ground shaking triggered a submarine landslide off the northern shore of Sumatra. Based on a simulation of tsunami wave propagation in shallow water, the results of this study indicate a potential tsunami hazard from a submarine landslide triggered by the strike-slip fault system. The landslide tsunami hazard assessment and early warning systems in this study area can be improved on the basis of this proposed scenario.

Author(s):  
David R. Tappin

Most tsunamis are generated by earthquakes, but in 1998, a seabed slump offshore of northern Papua New Guinea (PNG) generated a tsunami up to 15 m high that killed more than 2,200 people. The event changed our understanding of tsunami mechanisms and was forerunner to two decades of major tsunamis that included those in Turkey, the Indian Ocean, Japan, and Sulawesi and Anak Krakatau in Indonesia. PNG provided a context to better understand these tsunamis as well as older submarine landslide events, such as Storegga (8150 BP); Alika 2 in Hawaii (120,000 BP), and Grand Banks, Canada (1929), together with those from dual earthquake/landslide mechanisms, such as Messina (1908), Puerto Rico (1928), and Japan (2011). PNG proved that submarine landslides generate devastating tsunamis from failure mechanisms that can be very different, whether singly or in combination with earthquakes. It demonstrated the critical importance of seabed mapping to identify these mechanisms as well as stimulated the development of new numerical tsunami modeling methodologies. In combination with other recent tsunamis, PNG demonstrated the critical importance of these events in advancing our understanding of tsunami hazard and risk. This review recounts how, since 1998, understanding of the tsunami hazard from submarine landslides has progressed far beyond anything considered possible at that time. ▪ For submarine landslide tsunamis, advances in understanding take place incrementally, usually in response to major, sometimes catastrophic, events. ▪ The Papua New Guinea tsunami in 1998, when more than 2,200 people perished, was a turning point in first recognizing the significant tsunami hazard from submarine landslides. ▪ Over the past 2 to 3 years advances have also been made mainly because of improvements in numerical modeling based on older tsunamis such as Grand Banks in 1929, Messina in 1908, and Storegga at 8150 BP. ▪ Two recent tsunamis in late 2018, in Sulawesi and Anak Krakatau, Indonesia, where several hundred people died, were from very unusual landslide mechanisms—dual (strike-slip and landslide) and volcanic collapse—and provide new motivations for understanding these tsunami mechanisms. ▪ This is a timely, state of the art review of landslide tsunamis based on recent well-studied events and new research on older ones, which provide an important context for the recent tsunamis in Indonesia in 2018. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Volume 49 is May 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.


2000 ◽  
Vol 37 (9) ◽  
pp. 1259-1273 ◽  
Author(s):  
M E McMechan

Walker Creek fault zone (WCFZ), well exposed in the western Rocky Mountains of central British Columbia near 54°, comprises a 2 km wide zone of variably deformed Neoproterozoic and Cambrian strata in fault-bounded slivers and lozenges. Extensional shear bands, subhorizontal extension lineations, slickensides, mesoscopic shear bands, and other minor structures developed within and immediately adjacent to the fault zone consistently indicate right-lateral displacement. Offset stratigraphic changes in correlative Neoproterozoic strata indicate at least 60 km of right-lateral displacement across the zone. WCFZ is the southern continuation of the Northern Rocky Mountain Trench (NRMT) fault zone. It shows a through going, moderate displacement, strike-slip fault system structurally links the NRMT and the north-central part of the Southern Rocky Mountain Trench. Strike-slip motion on the WCFZ occurred in the Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene at the same time as northeast-directed shortening in the fold-and-thrust belt. Thus, oblique convergence in the eastern part of the south-central Canadian Cordillera was apparently resolved into parallel northwest-striking zones of strike-slip and thrust faulting during the Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene. The change in the net Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene displacement direction for rocks in the Rocky Mountain trenches from north (56-54°N) to northeast (52-49°N) suggests that the disappearance of strike-slip displacement and increase in fold-and-thrust belt shortening in the eastern Cordillera between 56° and 49°N is largely the result of a north-south change in relative plate motion or strain partitioning across the Cordillera, rather than the southward transformation of right-lateral strike-slip displacement on the Tintina - NRMT fault system into compressional deformation.


Geology ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (10) ◽  
pp. 837 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles K. Wilson ◽  
Craig H. Jones ◽  
Peter Molnar ◽  
Anne F. Sheehan ◽  
Oliver S. Boyd

2013 ◽  
Vol 734-737 ◽  
pp. 170-177
Author(s):  
Shao Dong Qu ◽  
Chi Yang Liu ◽  
Li Jun Song ◽  
Hui Deng ◽  
Long Zhang ◽  
...  

Three-dimensional(3-D) seismic data and structure analysis of the Lishu subasin in Songliao basin indicates that Qinjiatun fault zone is composed of two faults: East-Qin and West-Qin fault. This fault system initially formed at Huoshiling stage, peaked at Shahezi stage and faded dramatically from Yingcheng stage. The Qinjiatun fault was important in controlling strata thickness and distribution of the Huoshiling formation. Qindong fault, a typical strike-slip fault, developed relatively later, cutting the Qinjiatun fault, The major active stage was in Denglouku-Quantou stage, and weakened in the end of late Cretaceous. Qinjiatun fault zone was reversed at Denglouku stage when the regional stress went compressive, generating a structure nose that was potentially beneficial for hydrocarbon to accumulate. The strike-slip Qindong fault became active relatively later, cutting through the previous strata and proving pathways for both accumulation and effusion of hydrocarbon.


2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (11) ◽  
pp. 1416-1439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xavier Le Pichon ◽  
A.M. Celâl Şengör ◽  
Julia Kende ◽  
Caner İmren ◽  
Pierre Henry ◽  
...  

We document the establishment of the Aegea–Anatolia/Eurasia plate boundary in Pliocene–Pleistocene time. Before 2 Ma, no localized plate boundary existed north of the Aegean portion of the Anatolia plate and the shear produced by the motion of Anatolia–Aegea with respect to Eurasia was distributed over the whole width of the Aegean – West Anatolian western portion. In 4.5 Ma, a shear zone comparable to the Gulf of Corinth was formed in the present Sea of Marmara. The initial extensional basins were cut by the strike-slip Main Marmara Fault system after 2.5 Ma. Shortly after, the plate boundary migrated west of the Sea of Marmara along the northern border of Aegea from the North Aegean Trough, to the Gulf of Corinth area and to the Kefalonia Fault. There, it finally linked with the northern tip of the Aegean subduction zone, completing the system of plate boundaries delimiting the Anatolia–Aegea plate. We have related the change in the distribution of shear from Miocene to Pliocene to the formation of a relatively undeforming Aegea block in Pliocene that forced the shear to be distributed over a narrow plate boundary to the north of it. We attribute the formation of this block to the northeastward progression of the oceanic Ionian slab. We propose that the slab cuts the overlying lithosphere from asthenospheric sources and induces a shortening environment over it.


2005 ◽  
Vol 400 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 105-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Cembrano ◽  
G. González ◽  
G. Arancibia ◽  
I. Ahumada ◽  
V. Olivares ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (7) ◽  
pp. 2055-2065
Author(s):  
Adrien Poupardin ◽  
Eric Calais ◽  
Philippe Heinrich ◽  
Hélène Hébert ◽  
Mathieu Rodriguez ◽  
...  

Abstract. The devastating Mw 7.1 Haiti earthquake in 2010 was accompanied by local tsunamis that caused fatalities and damage to coastal infrastructure. Some were triggered by slope failures of river deltas in the close vicinity of the epicenter, while others, 30 to 50 km to the north across the Bay of Gonâve, are well explained by the reverse component of coseismic ground motion that accompanied this mostly strike-slip event. However, observations of run-up heights up to 2 m along the southern coast of the island at distances up to 100 km from the epicenter, as well as tide gauge and DART buoy records at distances up to 600 km from the epicenter, have not yet received an explanation. Here we demonstrate that these observations require a secondary source, most likely a submarine landslide. We identify a landslide scar 30 km from the epicenter off the southern coast of Haiti at a depth of 3500 m, where ground acceleration would have been sufficient to trigger slope failure in soft sediments. This candidate source, 2 km3 in volume, matches observations remarkably well assuming that the sediment collapse obeys a viscous flow with an initial apparent viscosity of 2×105 Pa s. Although that particular source cannot be proven to have been activated in 2010, our results add to a line of evidence that earthquake-triggered submarine landslides can cause significant tsunamis in areas of strike-slip tectonic regime.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104997
Author(s):  
Thananchai Mahattanachai ◽  
Christopher K. Morley ◽  
Punya Charusiri ◽  
Pitsanupong Kanjanapayont

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amos Salamon ◽  
Eran Frucht ◽  
Steven N. Ward ◽  
Erez Gal ◽  
Marina Grigorovitch ◽  
...  

Unique geological and seismotectonic settings may trigger a multicascading hazard and should be identified beforehand. Such is the head of the Gulf of Elat–Aqaba (HGEA) at the northeastern end of the Red Sea where its geology, tectonics, bathymetry, and earthquake and tsunami history exhibit clear potential for earthquake and submarine-landslide tsunami generation. We thus investigated the possible tsunamigenic sources in the gulf and evaluated the resulting hazard at the HGEA. First, we assembled a bathymetric grid and adopted GeoClaw software to simulate most of the earthquake-tsunami scenarios. Next, we resolved the scheme of the largest possible tsunamigenic earthquakes along the deep basins of the Gulf of Elat (GEA) and the associated Dead Sea rift valley, as well as the potential tsunamigenic submarine landslides in the HGEA. The use of GeoClaw was verified against the 1995 tsunami generated by the Nuweiba Mw 7.2 earthquake, and then operated to simulate a suite of earthquake scenarios. Results showed that the marginal faults of Elat Basin pose the highest tsunami hazard to the Israeli part of the HGEA. To better assess that hazard, we screened the geology and seismotectonics of the HGEA and found that the Elat normal fault presents the worst-case scenario for Elat city. It is capable of generating a multicascading threat of earthquake and submarine-landslide tsunami, local subsidence that can increase inundation, and above all, destructive ground motion. Scenarios of a tsunami caused by the worst-case earthquake on the Elat fault simulated by GeoClaw and Ward’s (Tsunami, The encyclopedia of solid earth geophysics. 2011, 1473–1493) approach, and submarine landslide in the HGEA simulated by Wang et al.’s (Geophys. J. Int., 2015, 201, 1534–1544) ‘Tsunami Squares’ approach, demonstrated waves as high as 4 m along these coasts. Accordingly, we constructed a map of the evacuation zone. We also show that strong ground-shaking and retreat of the sea at the HGEA should be considered a tsunami warning, although false alarms are inevitable. Furthermore, tsunami hazard exists all along the gulf and further assessments are needed to quantify this hazard and increase awareness among the area's population.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document