Historical Earthquake Estimation

Estimation of pre-instrumental earthquakes from anecdotal accounts

Most understanding of seismic history is based on instrumental data collected since the mid-1900s. The goal of this project – a collaboration with colleagues at Brigham Young University and Tulane University – is to leverage textual records of tsunamis to estimate earthquakes from teh pre-instrumental era. Because the records are inherently uncertain – ``human seismometers’’ – it is a natural setting for statistical inversion. The project was made possible via the help of a huge number of students working on components from both the geological and computational perspectives.

Left: The geological setting for the 1852 earthquake and tsunami in the Banda Arc of Indonesia. Right: The prior and posterior distributions on latitude/longitude.

Relevant Publications:

  • Paskett, Taylor, Jared P Whitehead, Ron A Harris, Claire Ashcraft, Justin A Krometis, Isaac Sorensen, and Raelynn Wonnacott. “A Tale of Two Faults: Statistical Reconstruction of the 1820 Flores Sea Earthquake Using Tsunami Observations Alone.” Geophysical Journal International, February 2, 2024, ggae044. https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggae044.
  • Ringer, Hayden, Jared P Whitehead, Justin Krometis, Ronald A Harris, Nathan Glatt-Holtz, Spencer Giddens, Claire Ashcraft, et al. “Methodological Reconstruction of Historical Seismic Events from Anecdotal Accounts of Destructive Tsunamis: A Case Study for the Great 1852 Banda Arc Mega-Thrust Earthquake and Tsunami.” Journal of Geophysical Research, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JB021107.