SEDIMENTOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF THE 2010 MENTAWAI TSUNAMI DEPOSIT

Post tsunami survey of the October 25, 2010, Mentawai tsunami, has been carried out by a collaboration team of Indonesian-German scientists from 20 to 28 November 2010. One activity of the researches were investigation on tsunami deposits along the coast following the event that devastated the islands of Sipora, North Pagai and South Pagai. Sedimentological properties of Mentawai tsunami deposit were explained by this study, from both megascopic and laboratory result. In general, beaches along the study area are underlying by a stretch of reef limestone, sediments mostly composed of white sand while grey sand was found only at Malakopa. Tsunami sediments were taken from 20 locations, start from Betumonga at Sipora Island until Sibaru-baru Island at the southern tip of the study area. The thickness of tsunami deposits are ranged between 1.5 and 22 cm, which are generally composed of fine to coarse sand in irregular boundaries with the underlying soil. Based on grain size analysis, variation of sedimentological properties of tsunami deposits range between phi=-0,5793 and phi=3,3180 or very coarse to very fine sand. Tsunami deposits mostly have multiple layers which described their transport processes, run up at the bottom and back wash at the top. Structural sediments such as graded bedding of fining upward, parallel lamination and soil clast were found. The grain size distribution curves show two types of mode peak, unimodal and multimodal which are indication of different sorting condition representing the source materials. While segment grain size accumulative plot generally shows domination of dilatation and traction transport mechanism rather than suspension. In general, very rare fossils were found from Mentawai tsunami deposit, but those findings gave information on how depth tsunami start to scour the seafloor and transport it landward, such as an abundance of Sponge spicule was found which indicate shallow water environments (20-100 m seafloor depth). Keywords: 2010 Mentawai tsunami, tsunami deposit, grain size analysis, fossils identification.