Nehalem, OR, March 17, 2021 – Lower Nehalem Community Trust will host a Zoom webinar at 3:00 PM on Monday, March 29th about the acts of nature that have impacted our communities for thousands of years. The sediments in wetlands along Nehalem Bay hold evidence about prehistoric earthquakes. How large were they? When did they occur? Did they generate tsunamis?
How do we know that any given change in Nehalem sediment is a record of a great earthquake, rather than other coastal processes, such as large river floods, winter storms, or sea-level rise?
Starting in 1987, geologists have studied stratigraphic evidence that can reveal the story of sudden changes in wetland environments around the lower part of the Nehalem River estuary. Three coastal geologists involved in the most recent of these studies, published in 2020, will describe how difficult it is to identify great earthquakes, and explain the new methods they used to estimate when they occurred, and their magnitudes. The speakers are:
- Alan Nelson, Emeritus Paleoseismologist, US Geological Survey
- Andrea Hawkes, Professor, Earth and Ocean Sciences Department and Center for Marine Science, University of North Carolina Wilmington
- Tina Dura, Assistant Professor, Department of Geosciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Lower Nehalem Community Trust is a nonprofit organization with a mission to preserve land and nurture conservation values in partnership with an engaged community in the Nehalem region of the Oregon coast.
Lower Nehalem Community Trust will host a Zoom webinar at 3:00 PM on Monday, March 29, 2021. Registration is required and can be done at https://www.nehalemtrust.org/events/.
For further information, please contact the LNCT office at (503) 368-3203 or visit our website at: https://www.nehalemtrust.org.
