Stratigraphic evidence of two historical tsunamis on the semi-arid coast of north-central Chile

Abstract On September 16, 2015, a Mw 8.3 earthquake struck the north-central Chile coast, triggering a tsunami observed along 500 km of coastline, between Huasco (28.5°S) and San Antonio (33.5°S). This tsunami provided a unique opportunity to examine the nature of tsunami deposits in a semi-arid, siliciclastic environment where stratigraphic and sedimentological records of past tsunamis are difficult to distinguish. To improve our ability to identify such evidence, we targeted one of the few low-energy, organic-rich depositional environments in north-central Chile: Pachingo marsh in Tongoy Bay (30.3°S). We found sedimentary evidence of the 2015 and one previous tsunami as tabular sand sheets. Both deposits are composed of poorly to moderately sorted, gray-brown, fine-to medium-grained sand and are distinct from underlying and overlying organic-rich silt. Both sand beds thin (from ∼20 cm to

• Publication year

  2021

• Venue

  Quaternary Science Reviews

• Publication date

  2021-08-01

• Fields of study

  Environmental Science, Geology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.107052
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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