Sea extreme events during the last millennium in north-east of Morocco
Abstract. The Moroccan Mediterranean coast is located in one of the most vulnerable area to extreme weather events or tsunami hazards. The objective of this research is to reconstruct the historical extreme submersion-events record using sea-induced deposits preserved in coastal lagoon. The Nador lagoon is the largest Moroccan lagoon (115 km2) located along the Western Mediterranean which presents a high cyclogenetic character and is exposed to tsunamis from Alboran Sea. The sandy barrier which separates the lagoon from the Mediterranean Sea is marked by many overwashes, which indicate how intensely has been exposed to the adverse sea events through history. Using the UWITEC coring platform, an undisturbed MC4.5 core (1.15 m long) was successfully sampled in the studied lagoon. To identify sea extreme events, a multi-proxy approach was applied combining sedimentogical and geochemical data. The preliminary results show that the identified paleo-events are concentrated over the last 500 years. The challenge that remains now is to distinguish between the tsunami and the storm deposits.