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Kuril Islands Biocomplexity

Hi Misty!

 

Thanks for your speedy reply. I think I will take advantage of your down time before the boat takes off... 

Have you or the researchers found any evidence of earthquakes from long ago from unearthing the soils of the Kuril islands? Also, is ther any evidence of earthquakes from the oral history of the local peoples? Can you recommend a book that has folk tales of the Kuril Island indigenous people?

Thank you in advance for your hard work in answering my questions. I appreciate it so much!

warmly,

Maggie

Mon, 07/23/2007 - 11:26

Misty Nikula

Maggie,
Sorry that this reply is so much delayed….I got your question just
before we went “off line” for about 4 days!

Most of the evidence of geologic activity that we find in the Kurils
tends to be from either volcanic eruptions or tsunamis, which are caused by offshore earthquakes either near or far away.  When the geologists dig a cross section down into the soils, they can locate layers that are created by volcanic deposits, called tephras.  Each tephra is a little bit different and some are quite distinctive so we can tie them to a specific eruption of a specific volcano.  Some are quite thin, maybe
only a few millimeters, while others can be as thick as several
centimeters.  If you look at my TREC journals for last year on August 21  there should be a picture of a cross-section that I dug on Paramushir.  Near the bottom is a layer of volcanic deposit called the
Kuril Lake tephra.  It is about 10 centimeters thick on the southern end of Paramushir and from a volcanic eruption at least 300 miles away that occurred over 7500 years ago.  Distinctive tephras like this can be used to “date” the other layers above and below it.

They can also find layers of sand that are deposited by tsunamis - if
they can determine the age of the sand layer, either relatively or absolutely, then they can possibly tell what earthquake is may have been caused by.  Right now, the geologist team is investigating a 15 meter tsunami that occurred just in the last 6 months on the northern end of Simushir.  There will be a lot more information about that and the other things that the geologists do in some of my future journals.

I am not very familiar with the oral histories of the indigenous peoples
of the Kuril Islands and I don’t think that there is much that survives
today.  The Kurils have been occupied by several different cultures over the past 7500 years, namely Jomon, Epi-Jomon, Okhotsk and most recently Ainu.  Unfortunately, when the Russians and Japanese people settled the Islands, the Ainu culture was “lost” and today there are no living Ainu, though I think I remember that there are some descendants of the Ainu that live on Hokkaido still.  No native peoples live on the Islands.  At one point, they were mostly settled by Japanese, but now, since WWII, they are all settled by Russians.
I do not know of any specific books about the Ainu or other inhabitants
of the Kuril Islands, but I DO know that there is a website that gives
information about the Ainu that I found last year and my students read information about their culture and traditions.  I do not remember the website address, but I’m sure that I found it simply by google-ing Ainu culture or some such clever thing.

Good luck and thanks for the questions!
Misty