Reason Mag Q1 2014 Seite 28

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UNDER THE SEA Quiet now the Cascadia Subduction Zone could be home to the next really big one Flooded elds demolished homes re shipwreck evacuation and fright These words written by Japanese scribes serve as a haunting reminder of the tsunami that ravaged the villages and ports of coastal Japan on Jan 27 1700 The tsunami struck without warning Typically a tsunami is the child of a preceding parent earthquake or similar natural disturbance This particular tsunami deemed an orphan without a parent puzzled scientists for nearly three centuries In 1996 the years of investigation coupled with careers spent analyzing Japanese written records and poring over geological and tree ring studies in the Paci c Northwest culminated when parent earthquake was reunited with its child tsunami Scientists had nally linked the orphan tsunami with its parent the Jan 26 1700 mag nitude m 9 earthquake in the Cascadia subduction zone of the Paci c Northwest The Paci c Northwest is located in the Ring of Fire a belt of subduction zones marked by earthquakes and volcanoes sur rounding the Paci c Ocean Nearly 90 percent of the world s earth quakes occur in the Ring of Fire The Paci c Northwest sits atop the Cascadia subduction zone which is more than 600 mi 1000 km long stretching from northern Vancouver Island to Cape Men docino in California illustrated in Figure 1 Along the subduction zone the Juan de Fuca plate subducts beneath the North America plate at about 1 2 to 1 6 in 30 40 mm per year 28 Reason ISSUE 1 2014 theSCIENCE