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The Role of Near-Shore Bathymetry During Tsunami Inundation in a Reef Island Setting: A Case Study of Tutuila Island

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Abstract

On September 29, 2009 at 17:48 UTC, an Mw = 8.1 earthquake in the Tonga Trench generated a tsunami that caused heavy damage across Samoa, American Samoa, and Tonga. One of the worst hits was the volcanic island of Tutuila in American Samoa. Tutuila has a typical tropical island bathymetry setting influenced by coral reefs, and so the event provided an opportunity to evaluate the relationship between tsunami dynamics and the bathymetry in that typical island environment. Previous work has come to differing conclusions regarding how coral reefs affect tsunami dynamics through their influence on bathymetry and dissipation. This study presents numerical simulations of this event with a focus on two main issues: first, how roughness variations affect tsunami run-up and whether different values of Manning’s roughness parameter, n, improve the simulated run-up compared to observations; and second, how depth variations in the shelf bathymetry with coral reefs control run-up and inundation on the island coastlines they shield. We find that no single value of n provides a uniformly good match to all observations; and we find substantial bay-to-bay variations in the impact of varying n. The results suggest that there are aspects of tsunami wave dissipation which are not captured by a simplified drag formulation used in shallow-water waves model. The study also suggests that the primary impact of removing the near-shore bathymetry in coral reef environment is to reduce run-up, from which we conclude that, at least in this setting, the impact of the near-shore bathymetry is to increase run-up and inundation.

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Acknowledgements

This publication makes use of data products provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (Contribution number 4618). This publication is partially funded by the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO) under NOAA Cooperative Agreement NA15OAR4320063, Contribution No. 2018-0131. Hermann Fritz generously provided the post-tsunami run-up survey datasets. We are grateful to Randall Leveque, Joanne Bourgeois, Frank Gonzales, Hongqiang Zhou, Christopher Moore, Marie Eble, Diego Arcas, Lijuan Tang, Jose Borrero and the anonymous reviewer for their endless advice and help.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NOAA Center for Tsunami Research, Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, UW/Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, 7600 Sand Point Way NE, Bldg. 3, Seattle, WA, 98155, USA

    Derya I. Dilmen, Yong Wei & Vasily V. Titov

  2. Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195-1310, USA

    Derya I. Dilmen, Gerard H. Roe & Vasily V. Titov

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  1. Derya I. Dilmen
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  3. Yong Wei
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  4. Vasily V. Titov
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Correspondence to Vasily V. Titov.

Appendix

Appendix

These tables present MOST model output for maximum amplitude along selected villages (Fig. 1 for locations of the villages). There is a tendency that run-up increases with decreasing Manning coefficient and the model better estimates run-up (Table 2). There is also a tendency that run-up decreases with removing reefs (Table 3).

Table 2 Model, simulated run-up (m) for different Manning’s roughness, n, values at 31 villages around Tutuila
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Table 3 Model, simulated run-up for different r values representing varying bathymetry at 31 villages around Tutuila
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Dilmen, D.I., Roe, G.H., Wei, Y. et al. The Role of Near-Shore Bathymetry During Tsunami Inundation in a Reef Island Setting: A Case Study of Tutuila Island. Pure Appl. Geophys. 175, 1239–1256 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-018-1769-1

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