Hawaiian legends of coastal devastation and paleotsunami reconstruction, Nu'u, Kaupō, Maui, Hawai'i
by Scott Fisher, James Goff, Andrew Cundy, David Sear, James Terry, Randall J. LeVeque, Loyce M. Adams, Marine Geology 447 (2024),
DOI 10.1016/j.margeo.2024.107408

Abstract. In Hawai'i, tsunamis are often described in orally transmitted legends (mo'olelo). This study examines sedimentary evidence of a probable local submarine landslide-generated tsunami, described in a legend from the south east coast of Maui which originated between the 15th Century CE and the first arrival of Europeans in 1778 CE. Physical evidence for a tsunami, found at the Nu'u Refuge, Maui, is primarily comprised of an extensive coral clast deposit (found at up to 8.5m above msl and 251m inland from the shoreline) together with numerous water worn cobbles which form fracture-embedded wedge clasts in a local basalt escarpment (at up to 8m above msl). U/Th dating of the coral clasts gives a maximum deposit age of 1597 CE, and so a maximum age of the tsunami event that may have inspired the local mo'olelo. This depositional sequence is used to characterize the nature of the proposed tsunami in terms of inundation distance, maximum wave runup and minimum flow velocities. A numerical model developed using GeoClaw matches well with the physical evidence. This study has global significance for the study of the destructive capacity of locally generated tsunamigenic submarine landslides.

Topography and tsunami setup:

• Contour plot of offshore slump
• Contour plot of Nu'u Refuge study area
• Gauge and transect locations
• Initial particle distribution (black onshore, red offshore)

Tsunami simulation figures from paper

Supplementary Information: Supplementary text, figures, and tables are incorporated in preprint (?).

• animation_pond05m   Animation of tsunami and clast transport for 5 m amplitude slump
• animation_pond10m   Animation of tsunami and clast transport for 10 m amplitude slump
• animation_pond15m   Animation of tsunami and clast transport for 15 m amplitude slump

• MakeSlumpDeformation.html   Rendered version of Jupyter notebook that creates time-dependent slump deformation   [animation of 10 m slump]
  This notebook creates the dtopo files needed for the GeoClaw simulations.

New 3D animations (Created using the PyVista visualization software)

• Nuu_debris_animation05m   Animation of tsunami and clast transport for 5 m amplitude slump
• Nuu_debris_animation10m   Animation of tsunami and clast transport for 10 m amplitude slump
• Nuu_debris_animation15m   Animation of tsunami and clast transport for 15 m amplitude slump

Code: Available at: https://github.com/rjleveque/NuuRefugeTsunami (Also requires the open source GeoClaw software.)

Archive: Code will also be archived on Zenodo with DOI [to appear]: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.XYZ