Studying and Dating Indian Ocean Tsunamis by Using Benthic Foraminifera in the Sediment Stratigraphy of South Andaman Islands, India

Abstract:

We analyzed the foraminifera and dated them to identify the sea level fluctuations in the coastal sediment stratigraphy of Andaman Islands. Our recent paleotsunami investigations are specially focused on unusual large magnitude earthquake and tsunamis in the south coast of Andaman. Our detailed study on the foraminifers preserved in the near sub surface stratigraphy and AMS ages show a strong signature of the tsunami event very much similar to the modern tsunami of December 2004. We found that foraminifer is an ideal geological key to bracket paleotsunami events. The AMS ages of these foraminifers supports the ages given by corals of Sumatra with a small error bar. The recent research approach to identify the ruptures and tsunami based on the corals of south Sumatra suggests a large time span of 1000 years for such mega events. Our foraminiferal archives obtained from 10g soil samples from the 2.5m deep Holocene stratigraphy suggests four seismic predecessors similar to the 2004 event with ~Mw9 with huge rupture. Huge foraminiferal population in the sedimentary stratigraphy is an indicative of sea level changes and the signatures of abrasion in the foraminifer’s test (180µm) indicate strong wave surges and bead load transport during tsunami events. Spontaneous death of organisms due to tsunami waves gives an exact time frame with a narrow age limit than the charcoal. Sediment stratigraphy of south Andaman had such changes in each millennium. Sediment stratigraphy sections shows the huge population and assemblages and the AMS dates of this foraminifera in south Andaman shows four mega events. This kind of fossil assemblages are commonly associated with the sea regression and transgressions in the geological time scale. Tamil ‘Sangam literatures’ one of the oldest literature available in Indian main land and the corals ages from Sumatra are also emphasizes the predecessors of such unusual large magnitude earthquakes and tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. All these signatures are indicators of sea level fluctuations associated with tsunamis due to large magnitude Earthquakes (~Mw9).