Faculty experts will hold seminar today on science behind tsunami

Cornell will present a public seminar, "The Sumatra Earthquake and Tsunami: The Science Behind the Headlines," today, Feb. 10, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in Room B-14 Hollister Hall. The university's School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences are hosting the seminar.

During the seminar, Cornell experts Philip Liu, professor of civil engineering, and Muawia Barazangi and Dan Karig, professors of earth and atmospheric sciences, will make presentations.

Liu recently returned from leading a scientific fact-finding trip to Sri Lanka on the recent tsunami in that region, and he will give details of his investigation. Karig will provide a general overview of the geographical and geological setting of the region.

Barazangi will explain how the tsunami-triggering earthquake -- near Sumatra -- occurred along a major convergent plate boundary, where the oceanic Indian tectonic plate is subducting beneath the continental southeast Asia plate. He says that as much as 1,200 kilometers of the contact zone between these two tectonic plates ruptured during the earthquake, with an average slip of 15 to 20 meters. "The occurrence of such mega-thrust, great earthquakes [magnitude 9] is infrequent, approximately once every 200 years," Barazangi says.

While there are well-documented historical earthquakes of large magnitude that have occurred in the region, Barazangi says, "It appears that no such great earthquake occurred in the recent past along the northern continuation of this plate boundary from the Andaman Islands to Assam in northeast India. This is a matter of utmost concern for the future, considering that Bangladesh is located very near this segment of the plate boundary, and that most of this nation, with a population of over 130 million, lies very close to sea level."

Barazangi also will examine the tsunami potential for the eastern Mediterranean. And he will explain how tsunamis have occurred there in the historical past and no doubt will occur again, placing the great city of Alexandria, Egypt, in harm's way. Compounding this problem is a lack of a warning system in the region, he says.