T11E-2942
Tsunamis from Tectonic Sources along Caribbean Plate Boundaries
Monday, 14 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Alberto M Lopez1, Silvia Chacon2, Natalia Zamora3, Franck A Audemard4, Frederic Jean-Yves Dondin5, Valerie Clouard6, Finn Løvholt7, Carl Bonnevie Harbitz7, Elizabeth A Vanacore8 and Victor A Huerfano Moreno9, (1)University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, Geology, Mayaguez, PR, United States, (2)RONMAC/SINAMOT, Heredia, Costa Rica, (3)Helmholtz Centre Potsdam GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany, (4)FUNVISIS, Caracas, Venezuela, (5)University of the West Indies, Seismic Research Center, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, (6)Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, Observatoire Volcanologique et Sismologique de la Martinique, Paris, France, (7)Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, Oslo, Norway, (8)Puerto Rico Seismic Network, Mayaguez, PR, United States, (9)University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, Mayaguez, PR, United States
Abstract:
The Working Group 2 (WG2) of the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Tsunami and Other Coastal Hazards Warning System for the Caribbean and Adjacent Regions (ICG/CARIBE-EWS) in charge of Tsunami Hazards Assessment, has generated a list of tsunami sources for the Caribbean region. Simulating these worst-case, most credible scenarios would provide an estimate of the resulting effects on coastal areas within the Caribbean. In the past few years, several publications have addressed this issue resulting in a collection of potential tsunami sources and scenarios. These publications come from a wide variety of sources; from government agencies to academic institutions. Although these provide the scientific community with a list of sources and scenarios, it was the interest of the WG2 to evaluate what has been proposed and develop a comprehensive list of sources, therefore leaving aside proposed scenarios. The seismo-tectonics experts of the Caribbean within the WG2 members were tasked to evaluate comprehensively which published sources are credible, worst-cases, and consider other sources that have been omitted from available reports. Among these published sources are the GEM Faulted Earth Subduction Characterization Project, and the LANTEX/Caribe Wave annual exercise publications (2009-2015). Caribbean tectonic features capable of generating tsunamis from seismic dislocation are located along the Northeastern Caribbean, the Lesser Antilles Trench, and the Panamá and Southern Caribbean Deformed Belts. The proposed sources have been evaluated based on historical and instrumental seismicity as well as geological and geophysical studies. This paper presents the sources and their justification as most-probable tsunami sources based on the context of crustal deformation due to Caribbean plate interacting with neighboring North and South America plates. Simulations of these sources is part of a subsequent phase in which effects of these tectonically induced tsunamis are evaluated in the near-field, and wave history snapshots are used to estimate arrival times and coastal effects at other locations within the Caribbean basin. This study is part of a contribution of the WG2 of ICG/CARIBE-EWS to UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.
