A 1,000-year sediment record of tsunami recurrence in northern Sumatra

Katrin Monecke (), Willi Finger, David Klarer, Widjo Kongko, Brian G. McAdoo, Andrew L. Moore and Sam U. Sudrajat
Additional contact information
Katrin Monecke: Kent State University, McGilvrey Hall, Kent, Ohio 44242, USA
Willi Finger: Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Swiss Humanitarian Aid Unit (SHA), Gerechtigkeitsgasse 20, 8002 Zürich, Switzerland
David Klarer: Old Woman Creek National Estuarine Research Reserve, 2514 Cleveland Road East, Huron, Ohio 44839, USA
Widjo Kongko: Badan Pengkajan dan Penerapan Teknologi (BPPT), Jalan Grafika, Yogjakarta, 55281, Indonesia
Brian G. McAdoo: Vassar College, 124 Raymond Avenue, Poughkeepsie, New York 12604, USA
Andrew L. Moore: Earlham College, 801 National Road West, Richmond, Indiana 47374, USA
Sam U. Sudrajat: Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Jalan Nasional, Meulaboh, NAD, Indonesia

Nature, 2008, vol. 455, issue 7217, 1232-1234

Abstract: Sands of time: Traces of recurring tsunamis on Indian Ocean shores Nothing known from written history gave reason to expect the Indian Ocean tsunami that took nearly a quarter million lives on 26 December 2004. That tsunami entered geological history by laying down centimetres of sand on the coastal plains that it overran. Jankaew et al. have now found such sedimentary records of earlier tsunamis preserved in the dark soils of marshy swales at Phra Thong, a barrier island in western Thailand. The cover shows an example from a pit dug there in 2007: the topmost light-coloured layer represents the 2004 tsunami, while a similar layer below records a tsunami in the fourteenth or fifteenth century AD. The ruler divisions are 10 cm long. In a separate study in Aceh, Indonesia, Monecke et al. found the 2004 sand sheet preceded by the deposits of three tsunamis from the past 1,200 years. One of these earlier deposits may match the medieval one found in Thailand. The combined findings suggest that the 2004 tsunami is neither the first nor the last of its kind.

Date: 2008
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DOI: 10.1038/nature07374

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