IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/nathaz/v74y2014i3p1449-1459.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Historical sand injections on the Mediterranean shore of Israel: evidence for liquefaction hazard

Author

Listed:
  • Shmuel Marco
  • Oded Katz
  • Yehoshua Dray

Abstract

The abundant silt and sand along the coastal plain of Israel have long been considered susceptible to liquefaction, but previous searches have failed to find field evidence for it. We report the first finding of typical liquefaction features and silty sand injections in trenches that were excavated behind a fourth century Byzantine dam on the Taninim Creek, some 850 m inland of the Mediterranean shore. The trenches revealed a series of flame-shape injections of silty sand that penetrate the overlying clay-rich soil. The injections are largest and most frequent within several meters of the point where the dam is badly damaged on the seaward side, which we interpret as a possible result of a large wave. Three features make the sand injections special: (1) their lower extent is commonly asymmetric with dominant southeastward vergence, away from the breach in the dam, (2) zigzag shapes characterize the upper parts of many injections, and (3) the size and frequency of the injections diminish gradually with distance from the dam until they completely disappear some 100 m away from it. We suggest that the sand injections can be explained by overpressure that was induced either directly by earthquake shaking or by a tsunami wave that breached the dam, filled the reservoir behind the dam and increased the pressure on the water-saturated silt and sand layers and triggered liquefied sand injections. The movement of water sloshing back and forth in the lake accounts for the zigzag shape of the injections. The similarity to structures that were observed in Thailand after the great 2004 tsunami and other palaeotsunami observations lead us to prefer the tsunami origin of the liquefaction features. Based on the stratigraphic position, the archeological context, and the historical accounts, we suggest that an earthquake of November 25, 1759 is the most plausible trigger of the sand injections, either directly or via earthquake-induced tsunami. The observations demonstrate the vulnerability of the densely populated coastal plain to liquefaction. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Shmuel Marco & Oded Katz & Yehoshua Dray, 2014. "Historical sand injections on the Mediterranean shore of Israel: evidence for liquefaction hazard," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 74(3), pages 1449-1459, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:74:y:2014:i:3:p:1449-1459
    DOI: 10.1007/s11069-014-1249-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-014-1249-6
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11069-014-1249-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gloria López, 2012. "Evidence for mid- to late-Holocene palaeotsunami deposits, Kakawis Lake, Vancouver Island, British Columbia," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 60(1), pages 43-68, January.
    2. Anna Fokaefs & Gerassimos Papadopoulos, 2007. "Tsunami hazard in the Eastern Mediterranean: strong earthquakes and tsunamis in Cyprus and the Levantine Sea," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 40(3), pages 503-526, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Busra Celikbas & Duygu Tufekci-Enginar & Gozde Guney Dogan & Cagil Kolat & Marzia Santini & Alessandro Annunziato & Ocal Necmioglu & Ahmet Cevdet Yalciner & Mehmet Lutfi Suzen, 2023. "Pedestrian evacuation time calculation against tsunami hazard for southern coasts of Bodrum peninsula," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 119(1), pages 243-260, October.
    2. Nazik Öğretmen & Domenico Cosentino & Elsa Gliozzi & Paola Cipollari & Annalisa Iadanza & Cengiz Yildirim, 2015. "Tsunami hazard in the Eastern Mediterranean: geological evidence from the Anatolian coastal area (Silifke, southern Turkey)," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 79(3), pages 1569-1589, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:74:y:2014:i:3:p:1449-1459. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.