RAPID: Flow Dynamics/Morphological Impacts of March 11 Tohuku Tsunami, Japan

2011年3月11日，日本东北部沿海地区发生的毁灭性海啸给沿海社区造成了严重破坏。2011年3月11日的东北海啸所达到的不寻常的高能量条件为我们提供了一个独特的机会，大大提高了我们对海啸在沿海地区的地质影响的理解。虽然海啸后的直接研究大多集中在损害评估上，但这个特别的项目旨在了解海啸波的动力学及其对自然景观的影响。迅速进入实地对这项工作至关重要，以便获得海啸波影响的证据。目前的灾后重建工作正在迅速消除发达地区的地震痕迹。由于暴雨、人为干扰和其他海啸后过程，本项目关注的自然、未开发地区也将迅速失去高水位指标和微妙沉积层的证据。该项目将把数值模拟与实地测量和遥感结合起来。一大批与之合作的日本科学家，虽然没有得到本项目的资助，但将促进实地的操作，美国团队的定量建模工作将得到芬兰合作者的补充，他将由独立于项目资金的自己的来源提供资金。这项研究的结果将大大提高认识和了解高能海啸波的影响的科学能力，从而有助于海啸危害评估，高能海啸波可能作为古代海啸在世界各地潜在危险海岸线上的地质证据被保存下来。这种新的认识将被证明与美国西部危险的海岸线特别相关，特别是华盛顿和俄勒冈沿海的潜在地震带在海啸危险方面与日本东北部有许多相似之处。海啸易发地区还包括加州、阿拉斯加和夏威夷。

The devastating tsunami waves of March 11, 2011, along the northeastern coast of Japan caused severe damages to coastal communities. The unusual, very high-energy conditions achieved by the March 11, 2011, Tohuku Tsunami afford a unique opportunity to greatly advance our understanding of the geological effects of tsunamis in coastal areas. While much of the immediate post-tsunami research is focused on damage assessment, this particular project aims to understand the dynamics of tsunami waves and their impacts on natural landscapes. Prompt access to the field areas is crucial for this effort in order to obtain evidence of the tsunami wave effects. Current disaster response reconstruction efforts are quickly erasing the traces of the event in developed areas. Natural, undeveloped areas of interest in this project will also quickly lose evidence of high-water indicators and subtle sediment layers because of rainstorms, human disturbance, and other post-tsunami processes. This project will integrate numerical modeling with field measurements and remote sensing. A large group of collaborating Japanese scientists, unfunded by this project, will facilitate the operations in the field areas, and the quantitative modeling efforts by the U.S. team will be supplemented by collaborator from Finland, who will be funded by his own sources independent of the project funds.Results obtained from this study will contribute to tsunami hazard assessment by greatly advancing the scientific capability to recognize and understand the effects of high-energy tsunami waves that may be preserved as geological evidence of ancient tsunamis on potentially hazardous coastlines around the world. This new understanding will prove particularly relevant to hazardous coastlines in the western U.S. In particular, the potential earthquake zone off coastal Washington and Oregon has many similarities to northeastern Japan in regard to tsunami hazards. Tsunami-vulnerable areas also occur in California, Alaska and Hawaii.