1833 Kodiak earthquake

1833 Kodiak earthquake
Map of Alaska with Kodiak Island Borough highlighted
Present-day Kodiak Island Borough; the historical earthquake is catalogued in the Kodiak Island region.
UTC time
  • ??
ISC event
USGS-ANSS
Local date
  • June 6, 1833
Local time
Magnitude
  • 7.5 (estimated)[1]
Areas affectedRussian America (present-day Alaska, United States)

The 1833 Kodiak earthquake was a historical, pre-instrumental earthquake reported in the Kodiak Island region of Russian America on June 6, 1833. Modern significant-earthquake compilations list the event with an estimated magnitude of 7.5, but its value lies in showing that the Kodiak and adjacent segments were historically active before modern instrumental records.[1][2][3]

The earthquake is significant mainly as part of the sparse nineteenth-century earthquake and tsunami record of the eastern Alaska–Aleutian margin. Early written evidence for large earthquakes in the region came from a small number of Russian colonial settlements and outposts, and later geological studies treat the 1833 event cautiously when reconstructing the earthquake history west and southwest of Kodiak Island.[4][5]

Tectonic setting

Kodiak Island lies above the eastern part of the Alaska–Aleutian subduction zone, where the Pacific Plate is subducted beneath the North American Plate. The Alaska–Aleutian system extends for about 3,000 km (1,900 mi) from the Near Islands to the Gulf of Alaska and has produced great and giant tsunamigenic earthquakes in historical time.[5][3]

The Kodiak Islands occupy a forearc region in which megathrust slip, upper-plate structures, and segment boundaries influence earthquake and tsunami hazard. Studies of the Kodiak area identify active upper-plate structures and splay faults near the islands, while regional syntheses emphasize that rupture behavior varies along the Alaska–Aleutian margin rather than following a single uniform pattern.[6][7]

Earthquake

The earthquake is catalogued for June 6, 1833, in the Kodiak Island region, with an estimated magnitude of 7.5.[1] Because it predates routine instrumental seismology in Alaska, its magnitude and location are historical estimates rather than instrumentally determined parameters.[3][5] The exact rupture area has not been established.

Geological work on Chirikof Island, southwest of Kodiak Island, includes 1833 among historical strong earthquakes whose ground motions and tsunamis reportedly affected the island. That evidence does not identify whether the 1833 event was expressed by shaking, tsunami inundation, or both at Chirikof, and the source locations and magnitudes of many deposits in the Chirikof stratigraphic record remain unresolved.[4] The event forms part of a broader nineteenth-century sequence in the eastern Alaska–Aleutian arc, where catalogued and reported events include earthquakes in 1826, 1847, 1848, 1880, and later instrumental events.[8][9]

Impact

No reliable casualty total, monetary damage estimate, maximum macroseismic intensity, focal depth, or tsunami runup distribution has been established for the event in the cited modern summaries. The lack of detail is consistent with the early historical record of southern Alaska, where nineteenth-century observations depended on sparse settlement, local reports, and later catalog compilation rather than seismographs or systematic post-earthquake surveys.[3][4][9]

At the time of the earthquake, Kodiak was part of Russian America, then administered during the Russian-American Company period. The political and documentary setting differed from later American territorial and federal records, which limits the amount of standardized information available for earthquakes before the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.[10][3]

Significance

The 1833 event is used chiefly as a historical marker in studies of earthquake recurrence and segmentation along the eastern Alaska–Aleutian megathrust. Paleoseismic studies around Kodiak, Sitkinak, Chirikof, and the Shumagin islands show that the written record is too short to define the full recurrence behavior of the margin, so historical reports are combined with tsunami deposits, land-level change, radiocarbon dating, and archaeological evidence.[11][12][13]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 National Geophysical Data Center / World Data Service. "Significant Earthquake Information: Alaska 1833". NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. Retrieved June 24, 2026.
  2. ↑ National Geophysical Data Center / World Data Service. "NCEI/WDS Global Significant Earthquake Database, 2150 BC to Present". NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. doi:10.7289/V5TD9V7K. Retrieved June 24, 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Brockman, Stanley R.; Espinosa, A. F.; Michael, J. A. (1988). Catalog of intensities and magnitudes for earthquakes in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, 1786–1981 (Report). U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin. United States Geological Survey. doi:10.3133/b1840. Retrieved June 24, 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 Nelson, Alan R.; Briggs, Richard W.; Dura, Tina; Engelhart, Simon E.; Gelfenbaum, Guy; Bradley, Lee-Ann; Forman, Steve L.; Vane, Christopher H.; Kelley, Katherine A. (2015). "Tsunami recurrence in the eastern Alaska-Aleutian arc: A Holocene stratigraphic record from Chirikof Island, Alaska" (PDF). Geosphere. 11 (4): 1172–1203. doi:10.1130/GES01108.1. Retrieved June 24, 2026.
  5. 1 2 3 Ryan, Holly F.; von Huene, Roland; Wells, Ray E.; Scholl, David W.; Kirby, Stephen; Draut, Amy E. (2012). History of earthquakes and tsunamis along the eastern Aleutian-Alaska megathrust, with implications for tsunami hazards in the California Continental Borderland (PDF) (Report). U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper. United States Geological Survey. doi:10.3133/pp1795A. Retrieved June 24, 2026.
  6. ↑ Ramos, Marlon D.; Liberty, Lee M.; Haeussler, Peter J.; Humphreys, Robert John (2022). "Upper-plate structure and tsunamigenic faults near the Kodiak Islands, Alaska, USA". Geosphere. 18 (5): 1474–1491. doi:10.1130/GES02486.1. Retrieved June 24, 2026.
  7. ↑ Carver, Gary A.; Plafker, George (2008). "Paleoseismicity and neotectonics of the Aleutian subduction zone—An overview". In Freymueller, Jeffrey T.; Haeussler, Peter J.; Wesson, Robert; Ekström, Göran (eds.). Active Tectonics and Seismic Potential of Alaska. Geophysical Monograph Series. Vol. 179. American Geophysical Union. pp. 43–63. doi:10.1029/179GM03.
  8. ↑ Davies, J. N.; Sykes, L. R.; House, L.; Jacob, K. H. (1981). "Shumagin seismic gap, Alaska Peninsula: History of great earthquakes, tectonic setting, and evidence for high seismic potential". Journal of Geophysical Research. 86 (B5): 3821–3855. doi:10.1029/JB086iB05p03821.
  9. 1 2 Lander, James F. (1996). Tsunamis affecting Alaska, 1737–1996 (Report). Boulder, Colorado: National Geophysical Data Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Retrieved June 24, 2026.
  10. ↑ Bolkhovitinov, Nikolai N., ed. (1999). История Русской Америки, 1732–1867. Том III: Русская Америка: от зенита к закату, 1825–1867 [History of Russian America, 1732–1867. Volume III: Russian America from Zenith to Decline, 1825–1867] (in Russian). Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia. ISBN 978-5-7133-0987-9.
  11. ↑ Shennan, Ian; Barlow, Natasha; Carver, Gary; Davies, Frank; Garrett, Ed; Hocking, Emma (2014). "Great tsunamigenic earthquakes during the past 1000 yr on the Alaska megathrust". Geology. 42 (8): 687–690. doi:10.1130/G35797.1.
  12. ↑ Briggs, Richard W.; Engelhart, Simon E.; Nelson, Alan R.; Dura, Tina; Kemp, Andrew C.; Haeussler, Peter J.; Corbett, D. Reide; Angster, Stephen J.; Bradley, Lee-Ann (2014). "Uplift and subsidence reveal a nonpersistent megathrust rupture boundary (Sitkinak Island, Alaska)". Geophysical Research Letters. 41 (7): 2289–2296. doi:10.1002/2014GL059380.
  13. ↑ Witter, Robert C.; Briggs, Richard W.; Engelhart, Simon E.; Gelfenbaum, Guy; Koehler, Richard D.; Barnhart, William D. (2014). "Little late Holocene strain accumulation and release on the Aleutian megathrust below the Shumagin Islands, Alaska". Geophysical Research Letters. 41 (7): 2359–2367. doi:10.1002/2014GL059393.

Further reading

  • Hutchinson, Ian; Crowell, Aron L. (2007). "Recurrence and extent of great earthquakes in southern Alaska during the late Holocene from an analysis of the radiocarbon record of land-level change and village abandonment". Radiocarbon. 49 (3): 1323–1385.
  • Soloviev, S. L. (1990). "Sanak-Kodiak tsunami of 1788" (PDF). Science of Tsunami Hazards. 8 (1).
  • Soloviev, S. L.; Go, Ch. N. (1974). Каталог цунами на западном побережье Тихого океана [Catalogue of tsunamis on the western shore of the Pacific Ocean] (in Russian). Moscow: Nauka.
  • Utsu, Tokuji (1964). 太平洋地域（日本，琉球，千島を除く）における地震津波の表 [A list of tsunamis occurring in the Pacific regions, excluding Japan and its vicinity] (PDF). 験震時報 (in Japanese). 30 (2). Japan Meteorological Agency: 37–45. Retrieved June 24, 2026.
  • Watanabe, Hideo (1998). 日本被害津波総覧 [Comprehensive List of Tsunamis to Hit the Japanese Islands] (in Japanese) (2nd ed.). Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. ISBN 4-13-061113-5.
This page is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.