Field evidence noted in 2008 to 2023 that pertains to sea floods of the past millennium on Anegada, British Virgin Islands

Publication Date

2023-10-27

Start Date

2008-03-15

End Date

2023-06-01

Atwater, Brian F., compiler, 2023, Field evidence noted in 2008 to 2023 that pertains to sea floods of the past millennium on Anegada, British Virgin Islands: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9TLLBOC.

This data release is intended to support assessments of hazards from unusually large tsunamis generated by faulting in the Puerto Rico Trench. The main question is whether faulting in the Puerto Rico Trench has produced tsunamis in the recent geological past, despite not having done so since European colonization. Much of the data compiled was previously used to identify a catastrophic flood, probably a tsunami from the trench, that was dated to the last centuries before European colonization (https://doi.org/10.1130/GES01356.1). Also compiled in this release is some of the evidence ascribed to flooding by transatlantic waves of the 1755 Lisbon tsunami (http://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-010-9622-6, http://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-011-9730-y, http://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-010-9706-310, http://doi.org/1007/s11069-011-9848-y). The datasets are designed for use, in conjunction with laser topography and bathymetry in https://doi.org/10.5066/f7gm85f3, in evaluating posited extreme-wave sources -- by comparing simulated flooding by storms and tsunamis with the distribution and attributes of field evidence. In this manner, modelers have compared simulated inundation by Puerto Rico Trench and Lisbon tsunamis with limestone boulders and cobbles of central Anegada (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-011-9725-8), and with coral erratics hundreds of meters inland in central and eastern Anegada (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2022.104018). New in this data release are locations of some 530 additional limestone boulders and cobbles that were mapped mainly in fields among salt ponds. Also amended are lists of strewn corals, molluscan shells, sand, and radiocarbon ages. Completely new here are datasets of limestone sinks, some of which provide access to groundwater that the probable Puerto Rico Trench tsunami contaminated; fished conchs, both heaped and strewn, of precolonial age; and stone walls, probably from the 19th century. The various datasets are is intended in part to support a manuscript, in preparation in 2023, that asks whether the probable Puerto Rico Trench tsunami terminated precolonial conch fishing from Anegada.

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