Common Core Humanities 9004

Catastrophes, Cultures & the Angry Earth

Coordinator: Professor J. Charles Schencking Email: schencking@hku.hk

Change the Way You See a Natural Disaster

Learn How We Can Respond to Future Calamities

Gain Knowledge and Skills to Rebuild Our World

Semester 2, 2014

All About: What if

Cascadia Subduction Zone

A Cascadia Megathrust Earthquake?

Is it possible?

Has it happened before?

When Plates Collide: Convergent Boundary

Cascadia Plate Subducting Beneath the North American Plate

When Plates Collide: Stress

Movement

Tension Building

Release

Potential Cascadia Subduction: Total or piecemeal subduction?

How will the stress be released?

Why is this important?

Proposed Satsop Nuclear Power Plant

James Swans Ethnography

Makah Indians/Native Americans

Chemakum and Kwilleyute

Many Micro Studies Earthquake Deities

But What About the Wave?

Moving Beyond Thunderbird

Digging Deeper

Fire Pits and Ocean Waves

Sand Overlapping Soil: Subduction clue

Ghosts from Our Past

Looking for Clues

Ghost Forest Locations

Red Cedar Trunks

Spruce Stumps

How the Trees Died

Rapid or Gradual Salt Water Immersion?

Carbon Date Everything Peat: 1650-1780

Red Cedar Trunks: 1690-1780

Spruce Roots: 1695-1720

Historys Natural Bar Code

Historys Natural Bar Code

Stressed Out Survivors

Recording the 1700 Tsunami

Uniform Tsunami Height Along the Coast of Japan

Waves Without a Parent

Reading the Historical Record Kuwagaseki: 2.5m tsunami

Tsugaruishi: 2.5m tsunami

tsuchi: 2.3m tsunami

Reading the Historical Record 2

Tanabe: 2m tsunami

Seas Rose Strangely

Seeing the Whole Picture

Tsunami Along the Entire Eastern Coast of Japan

No Parent Earthquake

Where Did the Waves Come From?

Where Could the Tsunami have Come From?

Which Subduction Zone?

The 26 January 1700 Cascadia Megathrust Earthquake

Subduction Along the Entire Zone

M ~ 9 Earthquake

A Future Cascadia Mega Quake and Tsunami

Most conservative estimate: 10 to 15% chance of magnitude 9.0 earthquake in next 50 years (accompanied by a 30m high tsunami)

40% chance of magnitude 8.0 earthquake in next 50 years