Tsunami Deposits of the Shikotan Earthquake of 1994

N. G. Razzhigaeva^a, L. A. Ganzei^a, T. A. Grebennikova^a, A. A. Kharlamov^b,
A. Ya. Il’ev^c, and V. M. Kaistrenko^c

^a Institute of Geography, Far Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladivostok, Russia

^b Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

^c Institute for Marine Geology and Geophysics, Far Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences,
Yuzhno–Sakhalinsk, Russia
e-mail: harl@ocean.ru

Received June 29, 2006

Abstract—This paper describes the results of the grain-size and mineralogical studies of the deposits of the
tsunami of 1994 on Shikotan, Tanfil’ev, and Kunashir islands. The studies were carried out within the portions
of the coast with different configurations, geomorphologic structures, lithodynamical environments, and char-
acter of the tsunami manifestation. The composition of the tsunami deposits is shown to be controlled mainly
by erosion–accumulative processes during the tsunami events and is in many respects inherited from the matter
sources. The tsunami deposits contain marine diatom species, whose richest assemblages were found within the
areas where the material from the underwater coastal slope was redeposited. The data concerning the deposits
of earlier historical tsunamis encountered in the same cross sections are discussed too. Their examination points
to a similar development of the erosional–accumulative processes during tsunami events with the same intensity
and an entrainment of the matter from the same sources.

DOI: 10.1134/S0001437007040157

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