A large amount of tsunami debris from the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 was sunk on the seafloor and threatened the marine ecosystem and local communities' economy, especially in fisheries. However, few studies estimated spatial accumulations of tsunami benthic debris, comparing to their flows on the ocean surface. Here, a spatially varying coefficient model was used to estimate tsunami debris accumulation considering the spatial structure of the data off the Tohoku region. Our model revealed the number of vessels nearest the coast at the tsunami event had the highest positive impact, whereas the distance from the coast and kinetic energy influenced negatively. However, the effect of the proximity to the coast wasn't detected in the Sendai bay, indicating spatial dependency of these effects. Our model estimation provides the fundamental information of tsunami debris accumulation on the seafloor, supporting early reconstruction and risk reduction in marine ecosystems and local communities.
Keywords: Disaster risk reduction; Earthquake; Inundation area; Marine pollution; Ocean velocity; Spatial-explicit modelling.
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