(ORDO NEWS) — Scientists managed to find on the Pacific coast traces of a fairly powerful tsunami and earthquake that happened in January 1700 in the subduction area of Cascadia.
Signs of a natural disaster, as it turned out, were preserved all the time in the rings of trees. Experts conducted a study of 38 Douglas trees and noticed some changes in a certain period of their growth. It is reported by Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences.
This way of doing research was proposed almost ten years ago. Experts tried to find quite old spruce trees in the flooded area. The required trees are located at a distance of almost 1.2 km from where the coastline is today.
These spruces were planted in the 1670s. One tree was planted at all in the 1650s. To analyze their core, a modern method was used, which absolutely does not harm the tree.
An analysis of the growth rate of the rings was carried out. Then the experts compared the results with the rest of the same trees, but which grew in other places. They managed to establish that during the tsunami of 1700, the spruce slowed down significantly.
Thanks to the new information, the specialists have created a fairly accurate model of the tsunami. They learned that the coast was flooded with a layer of water, which in some places reached 10 meters. At the same time, the power of the earthquake was as much as 9 points.
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