On this day in 1960

A sand layer deposited by the 1960 tsunami,
deposited on top of and later covered by peat

Today, 22nd May 2016, marks the 56th anniversary of the 1960 Great Chilean earthquake. With a magnitude estimated at 9.5, this still stands as the largest instrumentally documented earthquake worldwide. 

Palaeoseismologists have sought to characterise the geological evidence for this earthquake and the subsequent tsunami in a range of different settings.

So, what happens when a giant tsunami inundates coastal lakes?

This blog post is by Philipp Kempf, PhD student at Ghent University, who writes about his recently published Sedimentary Geology paper on tsunami deposits in coastal lakes in south central Chile. Philipp is now on twitter too, tweeting as @TsunamiPhil.