Tsunami Science: Reducing the Risk

Ghosts of Tsunamis Past

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USGS geologist Brian Atwater paddles past a telltale sign of historical tsunami activity: a tree "graveyard."

Jason Lelchuk for AMNH

Atwater and other researchers later found key clues in eerie stands of Western red cedars bordering the Copalis River and three other estuaries in the state. “We call it a ghost forest because the trees have been standing dead for centuries,” Atwater says. It’s a sign not of a tsunami, but of an earthquake capable of causing one. “After the earthquake drops the continental plate, saltwater can come in at high tide and routinely cover the forest floor, killing the trees,” he explains.

A Restless Record

At the start of World War II, a Japanese geographer looking at municipal documents from Japan’s Pacific coast noted a mention of a destructive tsunami on the evening of January 26, 1700. In 1996, Japanese researchers proposed that this event and the one that had affected the Pacific Northwest were one and the same. Tree-ring dating of the Western red cedars corroborated this date: the trees had all died at once, somewhere between August 1699 and May 1700. Recent analysis of flooding and other damage from the Japanese documents show that the tsunami’s parent earthquake was a gargantuan magnitude 9.

The mounting evidence since 1986 has convinced Earth scientists that the Pacific Northwest’s 1700 earthquake was just the most recent tsunami-generating quake of a surprisingly fitful fault. Additional deposit data have disclosed seven great Cascadia earthquakes over the past 3,500 years, with an average interval of 500 years.

As the geologic record unfolds, other researchers such as Ruth Ludwin, a seismologist at the Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network, are digging up oral traditions of Northwest Coast native communities that existed previous to written records. “It turns out there are stories amongst those tribes that are consistent with historical earthquakes and tsunamis on the coast of Cascadia,” says Bourgeois.

As the continental plate sluggishly gathers strain at Cascadia, there is no doubt that another massive earthquake and tsunami will roil the Pacific Northwest. When is unclear. To find out how science is reducing the risk of surprise and widespread damage, follow the essays about tsunami computer modeling and measurement in real time.