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ambience: underwater earthquake
The most obvious effect of a tsunami – such as the one that occurred earlier this year in the Indian Ocean – is the tragic loss of life and property. But there are other impacts as well, some of which may leave a lasting footprint. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet. Right now we’re listening to the sounds of an underwater earthquake, like the one that caused the Indian Ocean tsunami.
“It’s loss of life, but there’s also destruction of coral reef, redistribution of sediments.”
Gerard Fryer is an associate Geophysicist and Tsunami Researcher at the University of Hawaii.
“One of the effects that really is going to hurt the Maldive Islands very severely is the destruction of their groundwater supply. These are low islands. They’re coral atolls. They have a very thin lens of fresh water that floats up on top of saltwater, and now all that’s been disrupted by the tsunami. And so, now in the Maldive Islands, fully a third of those islands are now uninhabitable because they have no fresh water. Long-term effects of a tsunami? They sometimes leave sediment; they leave a signature of their passing. They will spread sand all over the place, and that’s useful for scientists because you can come back years later and take a core or make an excavation and see if you can see evidence for this thing. And that is how the great tsunami in the Pacific Northwest in the year 1700 was first discovered was from the sediments that it had left behind. But the coastlines that are subjected to tsunamis seem to recover pretty fast. It’s as if it’s just a part of nature. A tsunami isn’t a disaster until humans come along and decide they want to make permanent residences somewhere, and the great tragedy of the human permanent residence is that they’re often made without consideration of what the true natural hazards are.”
Pulse of the Planet is presented by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.
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