Paleoseismological field survey along the western coast of Myanmar

The giant Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and ensuring tsunami on 2004 December 26 is one of the recent examples exhibiting the activity of subduction along the Sunda Trench. Occurrences of such large earthquakes and tsunamis, Mw > 7.0 since the 1797 along the Sunda-Andaman Trench off west coast of Java, Sumatra and Andaman islands over the period of about three hundreds years have now been verified based on the paleoseismological and historical records (Chhibber 1934, Heck 1947, Berninghausen 1966, Ortiz and Bilham 2003, Sieh et al. 2004). However, the paleoseismicity of the northern extension of Sunda-Andaman Trench along the western coast of Myanmar has been poorly known. In December 2005, “Memorial conference on the 2004 Giant Earthquake and Tsunami in the Indian Ocean” was held in Tokyo with a support from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Sports, Culture, Science and Technology. Scientists from various research organizations, from Japan and the affected countries around northeastern Indian Ocean, and also from other experienced international societies, were gathered. The conference outlined several action plans that should be necessarily worked out for prevention of future tsunami and earthquake disaster around the Indian Ocean, mainly focusing on the 2004 event. Paleoseismology of the western coast of Myanmar and the Sagaing strike-slip fault Paleoseismological field survey along the western coast of Myanmar