Field Investigations and a Tsunami Modeling for the 1766 Marmara Sea Earthquake, Turkey

Turkey is located on one of the world's most hazardous earthquake zones. The northern branch of the North Anatolian fault beneath the Sea of Marmara, where the population is most concentrated, is the most active fault branch at least since late Pliocene. The Sea of Marmara region has been affected by many large tsunamigenic earthquakes; the most destructive ones are 549, 553, 557, 740, 989, 1332, 1343, 1509, 1766, 1894, 1912 and 1999 events. In order to understand and determine the tsunami potential and their possible effects along the coasts of this inland sea, detailed documentary, geophysical and numerical modelling studies are needed on the past earthquakes and their associated tsunamis whose effects are presently unknown.On the northern coast of the Sea of Marmara region, the Kucukcekmece Lagoon has a high potential to trap and preserve tsunami deposits. Within the scope of this study, lithological content, composition and sources of organic matters in the lagoon's bottom sediments were studied along a 4.63 m-long piston core recovered from the SE margin of the lagoon. The sedimentary composition and possible sources of the organic matters along the core were analysed and their results were correlated with the historical events on the basis of dating results. Finally, a tsunami scenario was tested for May 22nd 1766 Marmara Sea Earthquake by using a widely used tsunami simulation model called NAMIDANCE. The results show that the candidate tsunami deposits at the depths of 180-200 cm below the lagoons bottom were related with the 1766 (May) earthquake. This work was supported by the Scientific Research Projects Coordination Unit of Istanbul University (Project 6384) and by the EU project TRANSFER for coring.