identificationofslide-generatedtsunamisinthehistorical（8页）.docVIP

IDENTIFICATION OF SLIDE-GENERATED TSUNAMIS IN THE HISTORICAL CATALOGUES V.K. GUSIAKOV Department of Geophysics, Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics, Siberian Division, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr.Lavrentieva, 6, Novosibirsk 630090, Russia Abstract Despite the fact that the parametric tsunami catalogs contain very limited information on a particular event, the preliminary identification of landslide-generated events in the catalogs is possible on the basis of several criteria such as width of an area with the maximum run-up values, a large difference between the tsunami magnitude (on the Iida scale) and the tsunami intensity (on the Soloviev-Imamura scale) and a difference between the observed and the expected tsunami intensity. The latter criterion, introduced in the present study, allows us to divide the Pacific tsunamigenic events into three groups (“red”, “green” and “blue”). The geographical distribution of events from the “red” group shows its clear correlation with areas of a high sedimentation rate in the Pacific, thus making possible its interpretation as events where involvement of the slide mechanism into the tsunami generation is essential. 1. Introduction The world-wide catalog of tsunamis and tsunami-like events covers the period from 1628 B.C. till 2000 A.D. and contains nearly 2250 historical events that occurred in almost all parts of the world ocean, in many marginal seas as well as in lakes and in-land water reservoirs. . The catalog gives many examples of historical events where involvement of subaerial and submarine landslides in the tsunami generation was clearly observed and well documented. Some of these waves were destructive and resulted in a considerable economic damage and numerous losses of lives. One of the largest pre-historical submarine landslides with the estimated volume of mass flow of 1,700 km3 occurred ca. 7000BC in the Northern Sea at the edge of the continental shelf of Norway (t