{"id":24930,"date":"2017-08-01T07:06:42","date_gmt":"2017-08-01T07:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=24930"},"modified":"2017-08-01T07:06:42","modified_gmt":"2017-08-01T07:06:42","slug":"santa-marta-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2017\/08\/01\/santa-marta-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Santa Marta: a landslide induced tsunami on 19th July 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>Santa Marta: a landslide induced tsunami on 19th July 2017<\/h4>\n<p>On 19th July 2017 a small <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2017\/06\/21\/greenland-landslide-3\/\">tsunami<\/a> struck the area around <a href=\"https:\/\/watchers.news\/2017\/07\/27\/colombia-tsunami-underwater-landslide-july-2017\/\">Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast of Colombia<\/a>.\u00a0 Although this event has received little attention, it was captured on a couple of Youtube videos.\u00a0 The raw footage <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AtBycM2D81c\">on this video<\/a> is probably the best:-<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AtBycM2D81c?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>Whilst <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=v-6SDXl7M6s&amp;t=8s\">this news report<\/a> provides that footage and some additional shots as well:-<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/v-6SDXl7M6s?start=8&feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>This tsunami caused some localised damage but fortunately no loss of life.\u00a0 The Colombian Maritime Agency have put out a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dimar.mil.co\/content\/la-direccion-general-maritima-dimar-traves-del-centro-de-investigaciones-oceanograficas-e-1\">press release about the event<\/a> (in Spanish) that includes tide gauge data from Santa Marta that clearly shows the tsunami:-<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_24940\" style=\"width: 517px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-24940\" class=\"size-full wp-image-24940\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/08\/17_08-Santa-Marta-1.jpg\" alt=\"Santa Marta\" width=\"507\" height=\"256\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/08\/17_08-Santa-Marta-1.jpg 507w, https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/08\/17_08-Santa-Marta-1-300x151.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 507px) 100vw, 507px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-24940\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tide gauge data from Santa Marta in Colombia, showing the tsunami on 19th July 2017<\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>The report notes that the tsunami had a maximum height of about 50 cm, but that it was not associated with a seismic event or any meteorological phenomenon, suggesting that the most likely cause was a submarine landslide event.<\/p>\n<p>This is the Google Earth imagery of this area of the Caribbean:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_24945\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-24945\" class=\"size-full wp-image-24945\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2017\/08\/17_08-Santa-Marta-2-e1501569655135.jpg\" alt=\"Santa Marta\" width=\"640\" height=\"396\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-24945\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Google Earth imagery of the area affected by the Santa Marta tsunami on 19th July 2017.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>Immediately offshore from Santa Marta is the La Aguja submarine canyon, the location of which is shown on the Google Earth imagery above.\u00a0 This is a site that has been identified as being prone to submarine landslides in the past.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0895981110000337\">Retrespo-Correa and Ojeda (2010)<\/a> provided a description of this canyon:-<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>La Aguja submarine canyon (ASC) is located off the northern shore of the 5.7-km high Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (Fig. 1). The canyon extends 115 km down the entire shelf and continental slope, with depths ranging from \u221210 m to \u22123200 m. The canyon\u2019s width varies from 2 to 6 km and its mean thalweg slope is 0.9\u00b0.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/chapter\/10.1007%2F978-3-319-00972-8_56\">Vargas and Idarraga-Garcia (2013)<\/a> identified 31 submarine landslides along the length of the La Ajuga submarine canyon, aged between 632,000 years before present to less than a thousand years ago.\u00a0 Given the location of this tsunami, a good initial hypothesis might therefore be a submarine landslide in the La Ajuga submarine canyon.<\/p>\n<h4>References<\/h4>\n<p>Restrepo-Correa I.C. and Ojeda G.Y. 2010. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0895981110000337\">Geologic controls on the morphology of La Aguja submarine canyon<\/a>. <em>Journal of South American Earth Sciences<\/em> <strong>29<\/strong>:861\u2013870.<\/p>\n<p>Vargas, C.A. and Idarraga-Garcia, J. 2013.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/chapter\/10.1007%2F978-3-319-00972-8_56\">Age estimation of submarine landslides in the La Ajuga Submarine Canyon, Northwestern Colombia<\/a>.\u00a0 In: <em>Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research<\/em>, <strong>37<\/strong>; 629-638; Submarine mass movements and their consequences. Springer.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A 50 cm high tsunami struck the Caribbean coast of Colombia at Santa Marta on 19th July 2017.  The most likely cause was a submarine landslide.<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}