A great tsunami earthquake component of the 1957 Aleutian Islands earthquake

Yoshiki Yamazaki; Thorne Lay; Kwok Fai Cheung; Robert C. Witter; SeanPaul La Selle; Bruce E. Jaffe

doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2024.118691

Home/Archive/USGS

USGS · 70254577

A great tsunami earthquake component of the 1957 Aleutian Islands earthquake

Yoshiki Yamazaki·Thorne Lay·Kwok Fai Cheung·Robert C. Witter·SeanPaul La Selle·Bruce E. Jaffe

View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

The great 1957 Aleutian Islands earthquake ruptured ∼1200 km of the plate boundary along the Aleutian subduction zone and produced a destructive tsunami across Hawaiʻi. Early seismic and tsunami analyses indicated that large megathrust fault slip was concentrated in the western Aleutian Islands, but tsunami waves generated by slip in the west cannot explain the large observed runup in Hawaiʻi far to the southeast. Recently mapped 1957 geologic deposits on eastern Aleutian Islands suggest occurrence of very large nearby slip. Jointly modeling tsunami runup along the eastern Aleutian and Hawaiian Islands together with tide gauge recordings across the Pacific resolves 12-26 m shallow slip along 600 km of the eastern Aleutian Islands in addition to modest, deeper western slip inferred from seismic records. The eastern near-trench slip results in an M W 8.3-8.6 tsunami earthquake component of the M W 8.6-8.8 rupture, comparable in size to the adjacent 1946 Aleutian tsunami earthquake to the east. The reexamination of the 1957 rupture confirms the tsunami hazards posed by the eastern Aleutian subduction zone to Hawaiʻi and lays the groundwork for investigation of large prehistoric earthquakes through modeling tsunami runup inferred from stratigraphic observations to constrain their rupture processes.

Explore related subjects

Earth and Planetary Science Letters Article

Source-reported bounding extent: 48.54263327217666° to 59.731914492258255° latitude; -177.7386111957575° to -156.99642369575776° longitude. This indicates report coverage, not an exact sampling location. View area on OpenStreetMap.

Keep this discovery

BibTeX RIS

Yoshiki Yamazaki, Thorne Lay, Kwok Fai Cheung, Robert C. Witter, SeanPaul La Selle, Bruce E. Jaffe. 2024. A great tsunami earthquake component of the 1957 Aleutian Islands earthquake. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2024.118691

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

Discover connections

Alaska place Article subject Earth and Planetary Science Letters subject United STates place

Connections use source metadata and explicit phrase matches, not verified experimental comparisons.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related USGS reports

USGS2025

Triple-oxygen isotopic evidence of prolonged direct bioleaching of pyrite with O2

Sulfate is often touted as containing atmospheric oxygen whose isotopic signature can constrain redox, environmental conditions, and biological activity. Yet, the amount and isotopic fractionation associated with air-O 2 incorporation during sulfate formation is still debated, making its verification difficult. In this study, we identify a distinct, microbially dominated environment with the potential to preserve maximum signals of air-O 2 in sulfate. We report triple-oxygen isotope data for sulfate produced from pyrite oxidation in microbial and abiotic experiments, and from natural dissolved sulfate from the Rio Tinto, Spain, an acid mine drainage site. The oxygen isotope systematics of sulfate in these environments define a unique kinetic isotope effect associated with initial stage pyrite oxidation by Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans that preserves >80 % oxygen from air-O 2 in sulfate. Unlike experiments, which evolve toward water-oxygen dominated sulfate on short time scales, Rio Tinto, Spain hosts a microbe rich environment with distinct geochemistry that maintains high O 2 -oxygen in sulfate. Therefore, in addition to containing isotopic records from water and air, sulfates can also contain a biosignature that is promising for understanding conditions on Mars and early Earth.

Earth and Planetary Science Letters↗

USGS2025

Probing lower-crustal fault properties with frequency-dependent tidal tremor triggering

The way seismicity responds to periodic stress perturbations offers crucial insights into the processes that can trigger an earthquake. Laboratory and theoretical analyses have shown that the period of imposed forcing and source properties affect the sensitivity to triggering, but frequency-dependent triggering of tectonic faults is poorly understood. The rate of low-frequency earthquakes (LFEs) near Parkfield, California has been found to be strongly correlated with solid earth tides. Tidal forcing acts over multiple frequencies, and the sensitivity to tidal triggering of LFEs therefore provides a unique opportunity to probe the physics of earthquake triggering and underlying fault properties. Here, we find that the response of LFEs to solid earth tides at diurnal and semi-diurnal frequencies is highly variable but spatially coherent along the San Andreas Fault. Using rate-state friction modeling, we find that the variation of the amplitude of tidal modulation is mainly affected by the spatial variation of the background effective normal stress, whereas the spatially varied tidal modulation at diurnal and semi-diurnal frequencies is mainly affected by the fault frictional property. The spatial variations of the LFE response reveal a heterogeneous lower-crustal geologic structure and complex physical faulting processes below the rupture zone of eventual great earthquakes.

California↗

USGS2026

Dynamic drainage reorganization in Eastern Tibet: Insights from the Yangtze River first bend

The modern drainage network of eastern Tibet is widely believed to have developed through a series of river capture and flow reversal events; however, the timing and mechanisms driving this reorganization remain contentious. Among these events, the river capture that formed the First Bend of the Yangtze River (YFB) stands out as both iconic and particularly debated. Here we present sedimentary provenance data from the Late Miocene–Quaternary Dali Basin, located south of the YFB, which indicate that a southward-flowing Jinsha River (i.e., the present-day upper Yangtze River) sourced sediment to the Dali basin at ∼7.4–6.4 Ma in a drainage configuration different from that of today. Because this interval postdates the initial establishment of a near-modern Jinsha River system prior to the Miocene, our results imply at least two discrete fluvial reorganizations occurred at the YFB—one preceding ∼7.4 Ma and another following ∼6.4 Ma. By integrating these findings with landscape evolution modeling, we infer that the initiation of rapid uplift of the Yulong-Haba Mountains and the Diancang Shan may have been responsible for these drainage reorganizations. These results underscore that Cenozoic drainage systems on the eastern Tibetan Plateau have evolved dynamically on a short timescale of ∼10 5 –10 6 -year, rather than remaining in a long-term stationary configuration on ∼10 7 -year timescales.

eastern Tibetan Plateau, first bend of the Yangtze↗