Recurrence of great earthquakes and tsunamis, Aceh Province, Sumatra
Abstract
The timing and characterization of ancient earthquakes and tsunamis inferred from a variety of geologic studies in Aceh Province, Sumatra, are helping to understand predecessors of the 2004 event in the Indian Ocean region. We report results from three different depositional environments along the western and northern coast of Aceh Province, Sumatra, that illuminate the history of tsunamis through the past several millennia. Within a coastal cave along the western coast is an extraordinary sedimentary deposit that contains a 7,000-year long sequence of tsunami sands separated by bat guano. In two sea cliff exposures along the northern coast of Aceh is evidence for two closely timed predecessors of the giant 2004 tsunami that destroyed communities along the coast about 500 years ago. In addition, coastal wetlands along the western coast document land-level changes and tsunamis associated with the earthquake cycle in the early- to mid-Holocene. Together these records show a marked variability in recurrence of large tsunamis along the Acehnese coast. Time between inundations averages close to 500 years but range from a few centuries to a millennium.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUFM.T22E..06R
- Keywords:
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- 8107 TECTONOPHYSICS Continental neotectonics;
- 7221 SEISMOLOGY Paleoseismology;
- 4300 NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 9340 GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION Indian Ocean