Paleo-tsunami and Tephrochronologic Investigations into the Late Holocene Volcanic History of Augustine Volcano on the Southwest Coast of the Kenai Peninsula, Lower Cook Inlet Alaska

Abstract:

Augustine Volcano, a small island volcano located in Cook Inlet, Alaska has produced approximately 11 flank-failure debris-avalanches over the last 2,000 yrs (BP) that were large enough to reach the coast of the island and enter the sea. Each debris avalanche conceivably could have triggered a tsunami. In 1883, a tsunami generated by an eruption and flank-failure of Augustine inundated the indigenous Alaskan village of Nanwalek (previously English Bay) with 8 meters of runup. Nanwalek is geographically located atop a coastal headland on the southwest coast of the Kenai Peninsula approximately 85 kilometers due east of Augustine (Beget et al., 2008). Current research in Nanwalek is focused on describing a peat exposure situated on the shoreward edge of the English Bay headland. We present new data from this locality on the sedimentology, tephrochronology, radiocarbon dating, and field stratigraphy. The exposure is basally dated to approximately 7,100 yr BP and includes exotic units of volcanic ash, sand, and gravel. We correlate 19 tephra layers to late Holocene eruptions of Augustine and several Cook Inlet and northern Alaska Peninsula volcanoes. We interpret the non-volcanic clastic sediment horizons in the peat as prehistoric tsunami-inundation events of the English Bay headland. Augustine volcanic-ash deposits found within the tsunami deposits allow correlation to prehistoric coeval flank-failure debris-avalanche deposits exposed on Augustine (Waitt and Beget, 2009). We correlate three tsunami deposits associated with Augustine tephra marker horizons H, I, and G of Waitt and Beget (2009) each of which were erupted approximately 1,400 yr BP, 1,700 yr BP, and 2,100 yr BP. Additionally, we present new tephra and sedimentological evidence for a 4,100 yr BP paleo-tsunami inundation event at Nanwalek that we correlate to a previously unidentified flank-failure debris-avalanche event at Augustine Volcano. The recognition of this new deposit extends the age record for flank-failure events of Augustine Volcano by approximately 2,000 years.