Tsunami geoscience

Abstract

Research in tsunami geoscience has accelerated markedly ever since the tragedy of the Indian Ocean tsunami of Boxing Day 2004. Yet, for many decades and centuries, scholars have been describing a multiplicity of tsunami events. Thus the Royal Society devoted a whole volume to the effects of the Great Lisbon earthquake and tsunami of November AD 1755 while in the early nineteenth century Charles Darwin was describing the great tsunami at Valdivia, Chile, in his account of the Voyage of the Beagle. Today, research in tsunami geoscience is still finding its feet. Thus, whereas there has been a wealth of publications on the reconstruction of Late Quaternary and Holocene tsunamis, the literature describing evidence for tsunamis in the geological record are rare. In this paper, we describe how our understanding of tsunamis has changed over time and we try also to identify areas of tsunami geoscience worthy of future study.