TSUNAMI- SEDIMENT SIGNATURES IN THE MANAKUDY ESTUARY ALONG THE WEST COAST OF INDIA

The December 26, 2004 tsunami left its imprints along the southern coast of India especially the coastal areas of Manakudy in Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu. In the study area - Manakudy estuary - the post-tsunami sediment texture is predominantly coarser as inferred from textural analysis. Granulometric analysis indicates a shift of well-sorted, coarse skewed and platykurtic nature during the pre-tsunami season, to moderately sorted, fine skewed and leptokurtic behavior, after the tsunami. Violent hydrodynamic conditions have prevailed during the post-tsunami deposition of sediments. The unimodal nature of the post-tsunami sediments as distinct from the bimodal pre- tsunami sediments is reflected from the frequency curves. The CM diagram and the log probability curves confirm these observations.