Modeling Tsunami Inundation at Lincoln City

Abstract

The Cascadia Subduction Zone is a 700 mile long fault that runs along the Western Coast of North America. It starts in California and runs through Oregon and Washington before ending in the Southern portion of Canada. Until 1970, scientists did not know this fault existed. Many people outside of the scientific community either do not know about the fault or know very little about it. Those that do know about it tend to give very little thought to the tsunami risks and other effects. This project aims to make our knowledge about the Cascadia Subduction Zone more accessible to the public by modeling the tsunami and specifically how it could affect Lincoln City. To make this project accessible to the public GeoClaw was used for the computations and Google Earth was used for the visualizations.