Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences

Abstract. Geological identification of tsunami deposits is important for tsunami hazard studies, especially in areas where the historical data set is limited or absent. Evidence left by historical tsunamis in the coastal sedimentary record of the Gulf of Corinth was investigated by trenching and cor-ing in Kirra on the north coast and Aliki on the south coast. The Gulf of Corinth has a documented tsunami history dat-ing back to the 4th century BC. Comparison of the historical records and the results of stratigraphical, sedimentological and foraminiferal analyses show that extreme coastal flood-ing events are detectable in the coastal sequences. The ge-ological record from Kirra shows four sand layers deposited by high-energy marine flooding events. The deposits identi-fied show many similarities with tsunami deposits described elsewhere. The lower sand deposit (layer 4) was radiocarbo