Environment

Nations work together to size up Caribbean tsunami hazards

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Our project addresses tsunami that arise from fault planes.
Fig. 1. Our project addresses tsunamis that arise from fault planes (colored rectangular boxes). Abbreviations in bold are modeled scenarios by subregions: (1) northeast: NHT, Northern Hispaniola Thrust (three scenarios); MEF, Mona Passage; MT, Muertos Trough (four scenarios); PRT, Puerto Rico Trench; (2) south: SCDB, South Caribbean Deformed Belt including two scenarios, only the western segment and both segments (full); (3) southwest: LIM, Limón; 1882, repeat of Panama 1882 earthquake; NPDB, North Panama Deformed Belt; and (4) northwest: HON, Honduras; ROA, Roatán. Abbreviations in italics are tectonic features: NCPBZ, Northern Caribbean Plate Boundary Zone; CO, Cocos plate; CA, Caribbean plate; NAM, North American plate; PA, Panama microplate; SAM, South American plate. Red circles are earthquakes Mw > 5.5 from 1976 to 2017 from the global centroid moment tensor (CMT) catalog.

Sustaining Collective Memory

Scope, Scenarios, and Sources

Possible Caribbean Tectonic Sources

Tsunami Simulations for Local Hazard Assessment

The regions at risk and the maximum wave height for the largest possible event in the list of scenarios in this study
Fig. 2. This map illustrates the regions at risk and the maximum wave height (color scale) for the largest possible event in the list of scenarios in this study: a source consisting of a hypothetical Mw 8.9 earthquake that simultaneously ruptures two faults, each 500 kilometers long, near the coast of South America at the Southern Caribbean Deformed Belt. Current understanding deems it unlikely that the eastern segment would rupture without the western segment failing too.

Challenges in the Future

References

Author Information

Published October 7, 2018

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