AGU: Geophysical Research Letters

 

Editors' Highlight

Landslide at Italy's Mount Etna volcano generated a large tsunami in the Mediterranean Sea nearly 8000 years ago

Geological evidence indicates that the eastern flanks of Mount Etna volcano, located on Italy's island of Sicily, suffered at least one large collapse nearly 8000 years ago. Pareschi et al. (2006) modeled this collapse and discovered that the volume of landslide material combined with the force of the debris avalanche would have generated a catastrophic tsunami. This tsunami would have affected all of the eastern Mediterranean. Simulations show that the resulting tsunami waves would have destabilized soft marine sediments across the floor of the Ionian Sea. The authors noted that field evidence for this destabilization can be seen in other scientists' accounts of widespread large chaotic deposits of sediments in the Ionian and Sirte Abyssal Plains and tsunami-related deposits called homogenite on local depressions of the Ionian seafloor. They also speculated that this tsunami might have led to the abandonment of a Neolithic village in Israel.

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