Abstract
The southern Ryujyu islands mark an active convergent plate boundary. Large tsunamis in the area have transported huge boulders composed of Holocene fossil corals from fringing reefs along the islands. The boulders are suitable for dating with radiocarbon and provide evidence for inundation, run-up heights and timing of past tsunamis. Based on the ages of such tsunami boulders, we interpret that large tsunamis have occurred repeatedly with intervals of several hundred to one thousand years. Before the Meiwa tsunami of 1771, the area had been inundated by large tsunamis at about 600, 1000 and 2000y. B.P. The Okinawa-Sakishima tsunami of about 2000y.B.P. is interpreted to have been by far the largest of the sequence from huge tsunami boulders brought up around 20m higher than mean sea level.
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© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Nakata, T., Kawana, T. (1995). Historical and Prehistorical Large Tsunamis in the Southern Ryukyus, Japan. In: Tsuchiya, Y., Shuto, N. (eds) Tsunami: Progress in Prediction, Disaster Prevention and Warning. Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8565-1_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8565-1_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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