Tsunami fingerprints along the Mediterranean coasts

The Mediterranean basin presents specific geodynamic and morphodynamic features that allow tsunami genesis. Along the entire Mediterranean coast, morphological and sedimentological evidence testify the impact of extreme waves generated by exceptional marine events, tsunami and storms. Notwithstanding the discrimination between the effect of each of them is still debated, the long-time aged presence of human settlement along the coast of the Mediterranean basin allows to correlate geological data—geomorphological, sedimentological, seismological and geochronological—with archaeological and historical archives, allowing us to ascribe field evidence to the impact of tsunami which has impacted their coasts. Both landforms and sediments analysis—washover fans, mega-boulders, anomalous sandwiched layers—permit to individuate the coastal areas impacted by these events in the time. These geological evidences are useful for hazard and vulnerability assessment; they, in combination with the coastal values, naturalistic and anthropic, allow assessing the tsunami risk to which Mediterranean coasts are exposed.