Submarine landslides, geohazards and climate change, geological evolution of passive and convergent margins
Dave Tappin is a Principal Research Scientist at the British Geological Survey in Nottingham and a Visiting Professor in the Earth Sciences Department at UCL. Dave is a marine geologist by training, beginning his career researching the geology and hydrocarbon potential of the south western UK continental shelf, becoming a noted authority on the area. In 1983 he accepted an invitation to take up the Government Geologist post in the Kingdom of Tonga in the southwest Pacific, spending five years in post, and beginning a lifetime fascination with the Pacific region. Over the past 25 years he has researched the tectonic evolution of the outer island arcs of the western Pacific and coastal processes on low-lying carbonate islands in the region.
In 1998 after a devastating tsunami struck the north coast of Papua New Guinea, killing over 2,000 people, Dave led four marine expeditions to the area offshore of the devastated area. As a result, a submarine landslide was identified as the cause of the tsunami, a controversial conclusion because submarine landslides were not considered a hazardous tsunami source. This led to a global re-evaluation of the tsunami hazard from submarine landslides. After publishing two seminal papers on the PNG event Dave extended his tsunami research into the potential hazard from the lateral collapse of the intraoceanic volcanoes of Hawaii. Here, facies analysis of sediments of disputed origin resulted in identifying these as sourced from a tsunami with a runup of over 400 metres. When the catastrophic tsunami struck the Indian Ocean in 2004, Dave co-led the first marine expedition to survey the rupture zone, subsequently participating in two further expeditions, the research now leading to a new appreciation of the earthquake trigger of submarine landslides and the mechanism of earthquake rupture in tsunami generation. Dave was co-organiser, co-chief scientist and science adviser on the Indian Ocean survey that led to the recently broadcast BBC television documentary, ‘The Unstoppable Wave’, in which he took a prominent role.
Dave’s main research interest continue to focus on tsunamis, actively publishing the results of the marine expeditions to the Indian Ocean, as well extending his research into tsunamis generated by lateral collapse of volcanoes in the Atlantic Ocean where he is studying tsunami sediments on Bermuda, attributed to lateral collapse in the Canary Islands. He is co-PI on a major NERC funded project to continue the research into the Sunda subduction zone and, in collaboration with Professor Bill McGuire at ABUHRC, supervises a PhD student studying tsunami sediments in the Canary Islands. Dave is also leader of the BGS deep-time climate project.