Speleothems as past-tsunami archives over the last several centuries

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24654159
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Geology
• Research Institution: Tohoku University
• Principal Investigator: YAMADA Tsutomu 東北大学, 理学(系)研究科(研究院), 助教 (50321972)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 鍾乳石 / 津波履歴 / 東北地方

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study aim to investigate potential of speleothems as past-tsunami archives and to retrieve tsunami history over the past several centuries on the Pacific side of Northeast Japan. The disaster situations of limestone caves at Shinmei-saki and Minato-machi (Kesennnuma, Miyagi Prefecture) attached by the Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent tsunami were surveyed. Remains of some marine organisms as well as fine-grained siliciclastic sediments were found on the surface of several speleothems. These impurities as a marker of tsunami inundation will be fixed by calcium carbonate and be incorporated into the speleothem. Some speleothems collected from lower-elevation site have growth hiatuses which may indicate influence of past-tsunami inundations.

Free Research Field

同位体地質学