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A study to locate the paleotsunami deposition was carried out in Seubadeh Village situated in East Bakongan Timur sub-district of South Aceh, which is a part of the province of Aceh, Indonesia. Seubadeh Village is located on the coast and faces directly to Indian Ocean, thus possibly affected by historic tsunamis occured in the past. this area has been identified geologically as one of the areas that has the potential to store paleotsunami deposition. The sample collection was carried out by drilling the ground using coring at several points with depth of up to 3 meters. The collected soil samples have been processed in the laboratory, dried and sifted. Visual observation of the soil and sediment samples taken showed that it mainly consits of sand and ordinary soil. However, it was found that there were parts of the deposited layer that show geological characteristics fit to characteristics of a paleo-tsunami deposition layer. Thus, the excavated deposition layer is a very potential candidate for the paleotsunami layer. The paleotsunami candidate layer was found at at a depth of 2.5 meters below ground level. The deposition layer considered as the candidate paleotsunami deposition consists of 2 separate layers with different thickness. The first deposition layer has a thickness of more than 30 cm, while the second layer has a thickness of more than 9 cm. The paleotsunami deposition layer found will be further characterized by geological methods and optical analytical tools, namely laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). This study implies that the south west coast of Aceh holds records of past tsunami events, and Seubadeh Village could be an appropriate area to study paleotsunami further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigation of affected soils by the massive Indian Ocean tsunami 2004 in Banda Aceh city was carried out utilizing X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) technique for analyzing and identifying its chemical component. Based on this preliminary study, the XRF investigation demonstrated that the affected soil samples in Banda Aceh city 10 years after the tsunami disaster were still contaminated by alkali metal elements identified as salt content (Ca and K) and transition metal elements involving Al, Si, P, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, and Sr. On the other hand, this research also revealed that Fe element dominantly appeared in the tsunami-affected soils in more than 35% of collected samples, then it followed by Si and Ca elements. It could be noticed that almost all of the chemical elements that appeared in the soil 10 years after the tsunami event were higher than the similar experiment held 1.5 and 3 years after the Indian Ocean tsunami 2004 in Aceh province. This work found that the concentration ratio of Fe/Ti and Si/Ti is far higher than other elements, thus the ratio is potential chemical signature to characterize the soil samples impacted by 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Banda Aceh city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, plasma characteristics in terms of temperature and electron density of a plasma of the tsunami impacted soil sample induced by a transversely excited atmospheric carbon dioxide (TEA-CO2) LIBS was studied. Practically, the tsunami impacted soil samples was taken from at the worst affected area by the giant tsunami, Banda Aceh city, Aceh province, Indonesia. The generated plasma has been produced after TEA-CO2 pulses laser was targeted onto sample placed on a sample holder in air surrounding gas. The emission spectral lines emitted from the plasma region collected using system of an optical multichannel analyser (OMA) allowed atomic emission lines could be clearly identified. The temperature of plasma was estimateed through the method of Boltzmann plot, while the plasma electron density has been obtained by method of Saha-Boltzmann using spectral lines of calcium both atomic and ionic spectral lines. As results, the plasma temperature and electron density produced were T = 8691 K and 5,2 × 1015 cm−3, respectively. Generally, the plasma temperature and density electron obtained are fit to the Maxwell distribution criteria kT <50,000 and Mcwhriter's criteria (Ne >1.6×1012 T½ (ΔE)3) for plasma laser in state of local thermal equilibrium LTE). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]