Submarine landslide as the source for the October 11, 1918 Mona Passage tsunami: Observations and modeling

López‐Venegas, Alberto; Brink, Uri S. ten; Geist, Eric L.

doi:10.1016/j.margeo.2008.05.001

Cited by 46 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…1), is an area of considerable shallow crustal earthquake activity. Seismicity is commonly characterized by small magnitude events, but the passage is also the site of the destructive 1918 earthquake and tsunami (Reid and Tabor, 1919;Lopez-Venegas et al, 2008). The passage has for some time been considered a region of extension resulting from oblique subduction along the northern Caribbean plate boundary.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extension in Mona Passage, Northeast Caribbean

Chaytor

Brink

2010

Tectonophysics

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As shown by the recent M w 7.0 Haiti earthquake, intra-arc deformation, which accompanies the subduction process, can present seismic and tsunami hazards to nearby islands. Spatially-limited diffuse tectonic deformation within the Northeast Caribbean Plate Boundary Zone likely led to the development of the submerged Mona Passage between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. GPS geodetic data and a moderate to high level of seismicity indicate that extension within the region is ongoing. Newly-collected high-resolution multibeam bathymetry and multi-channel seismic reflection profiles and previouslycollected samples are used here to determine the tectonic evolution of the Mona Passage intra-arc region. The passage is floored almost completely by Oligocene-Pliocene carbonate platform strata, which have undergone submarine and subaerial erosion. Structurally, the passage is characterized by W-to NNWtrending normal faults that offset the entire thickness of the Oligo-Pliocene carbonate platform rocks. The orientation of these faults is compatible with the NE-oriented extension vector observed in GPS data. Fault geometry best fits an oblique extension model rather than previously proposed single-phase, poly-phase, bending-moment, or rotation extension models. The intersection of these generally NW-trending faults in Mona Passage with the N-S oriented faults of Mona Canyon may reflect differing responses of the brittle upper-crust, along an arc-forearc rheological boundary, to oblique subduction along the Puerto Rico trench. Several faults within the passage, if ruptured completely, are long enough to generate earthquakes with magnitudes on the order of M w 6.5-7.Published by Elsevier B.V.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extension in Mona Passage, Northeast Caribbean

Chaytor

Brink

2010

Tectonophysics

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“…Submarine telecommunication cable breaks are an important clue to the occurrence of submarine landslides (Fine et al, 2005;López-Venegas et al, 2008). Lockridge et al (2002) .…”

Section: Cable Breaks Along the Marginmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of tsunami hazard to the U.S. Atlantic margin

et al. 2014

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Keywords: submarine landslides meteo-tsunami earthquakes and landslides probabilistic hazard assessment Tsunami hazard is a very low-probability, but potentially high-risk natural hazard, posing unique challenges to scientists and policy makers trying to mitigate its impacts. These challenges are illustrated in this assessment of tsunami hazard to the U.S. Atlantic margin. Seismic activity along the U.S. Atlantic margin in general is low, and confirmed paleo-tsunami deposits have not yet been found, suggesting a very low rate of hazard. However, the devastating 1929 Grand Banks tsunami along the Atlantic margin of Canada shows that these events continue to occur. Densely populated areas, extensive industrial and port facilities, and the presence of ten nuclear power plants along the coast, make this region highly vulnerable to flooding by tsunamis and therefore even lowprobability events need to be evaluated. We can presently draw several tentative conclusions regarding tsunami hazard to the U.S. Atlantic coast. Landslide tsunamis likely constitute the biggest tsunami hazard to the coast. Only a small number of landslides have so far been dated and they are generally older than 10,000 years. The geographical distribution of landslides along the margin is expected to be uneven and to depend on the distribution of seismic activity along the margin and on the geographical distribution of Pleistocene sediment. We do not see evidence that gas hydrate dissociation contributes to the generation of landslides along the U.S. Atlantic margin. Analysis of landslide statistics along the fluvial and glacial portions of the margin indicate that most of the landslides are translational, were probably initiated by seismic acceleration, and failed as aggregate slope failures. How tsunamis are generated from aggregate landslides remains however, unclear. Estimates of the recurrence interval of earthquakes along the continental slope may provide maximum estimates for the recurrence interval of landslide along the margin. Tsunamis caused by atmospheric disturbances and by coastal earthquakes may be more frequent than those generated by landslides, but their amplitudes are probably smaller. Among the possible far-field earthquake sources, only earthquakes located within the Gulf of Cadiz or west of the Tore-Madeira Rise are likely to affect the U.S. coast. It is questionable whether earthquakes on the Puerto Rico Trench are capable of producing a large enough tsunami that will affect the U.S. Atlantic coast. More information is needed to evaluate the seismic potential of the northern Cuba fold-and-thrust belt. The hazard from a volcano flank collapse in the Canary Islands is likely smaller than originally stated, and there is not enough information to evaluate the magnitude and frequency of flank collapse from the Azores Islands. Both deterministic and probabilistic methods to evaluate the tsunami hazard from the margin are available for application to the Atlantic margin, but their implementation requires more information than is c...

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“…Some studies are based on newly acquired multibeam data, e.g., Puerto Rico, 1918(López-Venegas et al, 2008. Other studies have re-evaluated anomalous tsunamis with runups that, to some degree, are too large in relation to their proposed earthquake source, e.g.…”

Section: 3mentioning

confidence: 99%

Submarine Mass Failures as Tsunami Sources – their Climate Control

Tappin

2012

Climate Forcing of Geological Hazards

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Submarine landslide as the source for the October 11, 1918 Mona Passage tsunami: Observations and modeling

Cited by 46 publications

References 12 publications

Extension in Mona Passage, Northeast Caribbean

Extension in Mona Passage, Northeast Caribbean

Assessment of tsunami hazard to the U.S. Atlantic margin

Submarine Mass Failures as Tsunami Sources – their Climate Control

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