Ed heads North

Ben, Daria and Isobel investigate the stratigraphy

Following Emma's departure back to the UK, I headed north from Valdivia for part 2 of my field season in Chile. Three buses, each slower and more decrepit than the last took me to Temuco, then Carahue and finally Tirua. Here, I met up with Marco Cisternas again, along with Lisa Ely, Alan Nelson, Rob Wesson and Isobel Hong from the US. Ben Horton and Daria Nikitina swelled our numbers to 8 when they arrived yesterday.

We've spent the last four days working at Quidico, a small river valley 20 minutes drive north of Tirua. We've been digging deep pits, cleaning river bank exposures and taking thin columns of sediment using a coring device to try to understand the sequence of sediments that has been laid down at the site. The presence of sand layers may suggest inundation by tsunamis.

In a few days I will be heading further south than the area Emma and I have been working on. With Marco and Rob, I'll be heading to Maullin, where Marco has found evidence for 2000 years of great earthquakes. We'll continue south to the island of Chiloe, where we'll be canoing between possible sites.