News

30.09.2025
The PALEOSUMA project comes to an official end. Over two years, the project set out to improve our understanding of past tsunami activity along the west coast of Sumatra, one of the world’s most important natural laboratories for studying coastal geohazards. Working with partners in Indonesia, Poland, Singapore and beyond, the project team carried out two field seasons, investigated new coastal sites, collected sediment cores, and analysed natural archives preserved in wetlands, lagoons, floodplains and coastal deposits. These sediments contain traces of extreme waves that happened long before modern instruments or written records were available.

The project identified new evidence for past tsunami flooding at several sites, including Susoh in Aceh, Bintuhan in southern Sumatra, and sites in Semangka Bay linked to the 1883 Krakatau eruption. These findings show that tsunami risk along Sumatra is not uniform. Some parts of the coast preserve clear evidence of major marine flooding, while an almost 200 km-long stretch in southern Sumatra appears to contain little or no record of large tsunamis. This suggests that different sections of the Sunda Megathrust may behave differently, with some areas more likely than others to produce large tsunami-generating earthquakes. By extending the record of past events beyond the short period covered by modern observations, PALEOSUMA adds important new information for understanding future tsunami hazards.

Beyond the scientific results, PALEOSUMA was also a project about building people, skills and collaborations. The work strengthened cooperation between Adam Mickiewicz University and Syiah Kuala University, supported student training in sedimentological and stratigraphic analysis, and helped develop a wider international network focused on coastal hazards in Southeast Asia.  Although the formal project period has ended, the samples, data, collaborations and research questions generated by PALEOSUMA will continue to support new publications, student projects and future grant applications. In this sense, the end of the project is not really an end, but the beginning of the next stage of work on the coastal hazards of Sumatra and the wider region. Extensive sample material from the project will continue to be analysed for many months to come, if you are interested in taking part in the work feel free to contact the PI of the project.  

We would like to thank everyone who was involved in the project and everyone that helped out.