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

2011年3月11日，日本东北海岸发生了毁灭性的海啸，对沿海社区造成了严重破坏。2011年3月11日发生的东北海啸所造成的异常高能条件，为我们提供了一个独特的机会，极大地促进了我们对海啸对沿海地区地质影响的了解。虽然海啸后的大部分研究都集中在损失评估上，但这一特定项目的目的是了解海啸波的动态及其对自然景观的影响。迅速进入实地地区是这项努力的关键，以便获得海啸波影响的证据。目前的灾害应对重建工作正在迅速消除发达地区发生的这一事件的痕迹。由于暴雨、人为干扰和其他海啸后的过程，该项目感兴趣的自然、未开发地区也将很快失去高水位指标和微妙沉淀层的证据。该项目将把数值模拟与现场测量和遥感相结合。一大批没有该项目资助的日本科学家将协助现场工作，美国团队的定量建模工作将得到来自芬兰的合作者的补充，他将由自己独立于项目资金的来源提供资金。这项研究的结果将有助于海啸危险评估，因为它极大地提高了识别和理解高能海啸波的科学能力，这些海啸波可能被保存下来，作为世界各地潜在危险海岸线上古代海啸的地质证据。这一新的理解将被证明与美国西部危险的海岸线特别相关。尤其是，华盛顿和俄勒冈州沿海的潜在地震区在海啸危险方面与日本东北部有许多相似之处。加利福尼亚州、阿拉斯加和夏威夷也出现了海啸易发区。

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.