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Tsunami trimlines identified across different islands of the Tonga archipelago (NERC Grant NE/X002454/1)

Publisher
British Geological Survey (BGS)
Updated
28 August 2026
Topic
Not set
Licence
Not set

Summary

Tsunami trimlines identified across different islands of the Tonga archipelago. Trimlines have been used as a reference land feature following the January 2022 Tonga tsunami event that ripped off vegetation and built-up areas. Trimlines are distinctive limits between an area with sand coverage, vegetation destruction, and soil erosion on the one hand, and the unaffected natural vegetation on the other. This distinction provides a good landmark to map the inundation width and the landward extension of tsunami runup. In this case, the trimlines have been manually delineated by BGS - Earth Observation team using different high-resolution satellite datasets both optical (KompSat, Planet, Pleiades, WorldView) and radar (TerraSAR-X). Trimlines are well known from task-force publications documenting recent tsunami detection efforts and provide key information to support tsunami triggering mechanism models. For more info, see https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/tsunami-terms and Scheffers et al. (2012), https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-010-9691-6

Data links

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Data 28/8/2026

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Additional information

Source Metadata
XML, HTML
Date added
28 August 2026
Harvest GUID
f19549a8-8d3f-5588-e053-0937940a790b
Extent (Latitude)
-20.2500° to -21.1000°
Extent (Longitude)
-175.3500° to -174.7000°
Dataset reference date (creation)
2022-11-24
Frequency of update
notApplicable
Access constraints
The copyright of materials derived from the British Geological Survey's work is vested in the Natural Environment Research Council [NERC]. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a retrieval system of any nature, without the prior permission of the copyright holder, via the BGS Intellectual Property Rights Manager. Use by customers of information provided by the BGS, is at the customer's own risk. In view of the disparate sources of information at BGS's disposal, including such material donated to BGS, that BGS accepts in good faith as being accurate, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) gives no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the quality or accuracy of the information supplied, or to the information's suitability for any use. NERC/BGS accepts no liability whatever in respect of loss, damage, injury or other occurence however caused.
Responsible party
British Geological Survey (distributor, originator, pointOfContact)
ISO 19139 resource type
dataset
Metadata language
eng

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