The is a submarine

trough Trough may refer to: In science * Trough (geology), a long depression less steep than a trench * Trough (meteorology), an elongated region of low atmospheric pressure * Trough (physics), the lowest point on a wave * Trough level (medicine), the l ...

located south of the

Nankaidō is a Japanese geographical term. It means both an ancient division of the country and the main road running through it. The road connected provincial capitals in this region. It was part of the Gokishichidō system. The ''Nankaidō'' encompass ...

region of

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

's island of

Honshu , historically called , is the largest and most populous island of Japan. It is located south of Hokkaidō across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyūshū across the Kanmon Straits. The island separ ...

, extending approximately offshore. The underlying fault, the ''Nankai megathrust,'' is the source of the devastating Nankai megathrust earthquakes, while the trough itself is potentially a major source of

hydrocarbon In organic chemistry, a hydrocarbon is an organic compound consisting entirely of hydrogen and carbon. Hydrocarbons are examples of group 14 hydrides. Hydrocarbons are generally colourless and hydrophobic, and their odors are usually weak or ex ...

fuel A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chemical energy but ...

, in the form of

methane clathrate Methane clathrate (CH4·5.75H2O) or (8CH4·46H2O), also called methane hydrate, hydromethane, methane ice, fire ice, natural gas hydrate, or gas hydrate, is a solid clathrate compound (more specifically, a clathrate hydrate) in which a large amou ...

. In

plate tectonics Plate tectonics (from the la, label=Late Latin, tectonicus, from the grc, τεκτονικός, lit=pertaining to building) is the generally accepted scientific theory that considers the Earth's lithosphere to comprise a number of large ...

, the Nankai Trough marks a subduction zone that is caused by subduction of the

Philippine Sea Plate The Philippine Sea Plate or the Philippine Plate is a tectonic plate comprising oceanic lithosphere that lies beneath the Philippine Sea, to the east of the Philippines. Most segments of the Philippines, including northern Luzon, are part of ...

beneath Japan, part of the

Eurasian plate The Eurasian Plate is a tectonic plate that includes most of the continent of Eurasia (a landmass consisting of the traditional continents of Europe and Asia), with the notable exceptions of the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian subcontinent and ...

(Kanda et al., 2004). This plate boundary would be an

oceanic trench Oceanic trenches are prominent long, narrow topographic depressions of the ocean floor. They are typically wide and below the level of the surrounding oceanic floor, but can be thousands of kilometers in length. There are about of oceanic tren ...

except for a high flux of sediments that fills the trench. Within the Nankai Trough there is a large amount of deformed trench sediments (Ike, 2004), making one of Earth's best examples of

accretionary prism An accretionary wedge or accretionary prism forms from sediments accreted onto the non-subducting tectonic plate at a convergent plate boundary. Most of the material in the accretionary wedge consists of marine sediments scraped off from the do ...

. Furthermore, seismic reflection studies have revealed the presence of basement highs that are interpreted as seamounts that are covered in sediments (Ike, 2004). The northern part of the trough is known as the

Suruga Trough The is a trough that lies off the coast of Suruga Bay in Japan, forming part of the Nankai Trough, the latter being responsible the source of many large earthquakes in Japan's history. Both mark the boundary of the Philippine Sea Plate subductin ...

, while to the east is the

Sagami Trough The also Sagami Trench, Sagami Megathrust, or Sagami Subduction Zone is a long trough, which is the surface expression of the convergent plate boundary where the Philippine Sea Plate is being subducted under the Okhotsk Plate. It stretches from t ...

. The Nankai Trough runs roughly parallel to the

Japan Median Tectonic Line , also Median Tectonic Line (MTL), is Japan's longest fault system. The MTL begins near Ibaraki Prefecture, where it connects with the Itoigawa-Shizuoka Tectonic Line (ISTL) and the Fossa Magna. It runs parallel to Japan's volcanic arc, passing ...

Rates of tectonic motion

Conventional geologic estimates of plate movement velocities are difficult in the Nankai Trough because there are no spreading ridges that bound the

tectonic plate Plate tectonics (from the la, label=Late Latin, tectonicus, from the grc, τεκτονικός, lit=pertaining to building) is the generally accepted scientific theory that considers the Earth's lithosphere to comprise a number of large te ...

. This area was not in the original NUVEL models (DeMets et al., 1990). However, a more recent study that included the Philippine Sea plate was based on data from the NUVEL-1A model (Zang et al., 2002). This study estimates that subduction in the Nankai Trough is about 43 mm/yr. REVEL-based calculations indicate that there is no accumulation of strain at the trench. The rates of movement have been calculated to be in a range of 3.0 ± 1.8 mm/yr to 11.1 ± 1.7 mm/yr (Sella et al., 2002). As mentioned previously, the NUVEL-1A plate motion model does not include the Philippine Sea plate. This is because the mathematics of this model only used twelve plates, and the Philippine Sea and

Eurasian Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Ja ...

convergent margin were not included. However, using the Eurasia to North America plate motion, the estimated rate was 2–4 mm/yr (DeMets et al., 1990). This is not in agreement with the REVEL model, seemingly indicating that the NUVEL-1A model may need further revision.

Sedimentology

The deposits in the trough are primarily

trench A trench is a type of excavation or in the ground that is generally deeper than it is wide (as opposed to a wider gully, or ditch), and narrow compared with its length (as opposed to a simple hole or pit). In geology, trenches result from eros ...

-wedge

turbidite A turbidite is the geologic deposit of a turbidity current, which is a type of amalgamation of fluidal and sediment gravity flow responsible for distributing vast amounts of clastic sediment into the deep ocean. Sequencing Turbidites were ...

s (Spinelli et al., 2007). There are indications of an increase in the retention of porosity within the rock. Typically porosity decreases with increasing depth. However, there is an anomalous preservation of porosity at depth at drill site 1173. This has been attributed to post-depositional opal cementation that is preserving the porosity (Spinelli et al., 2007). The detrital clays, primarily

smectite A smectite (from ancient Greek ''σμηκτός'' smektos 'lubricated'; ''σμηκτρίς'' smektris 'walker's earth', 'fuller's earth'; rubbing earth; earth that has the property of cleaning) is a mineral mixtures of various swelling sheet sil ...

, display variation over time and location in the Nankai Trough as well as the Shikoku basin. At depth there is an increase in the smectite clay content in the sediments, inferring that there has been a change in the deposition source rock (Steurer et al., 2003). Furthermore, there is a geothermal alteration of the smectite, converting it to illite clay (Steurer et al., 2003).

Tectonic structure

The Nankai Trough is actively deforming and marks a region of seismic activity. Deformation is concentrated in the outermost imbricate zone, with a significant amount of "out of sequence" thrusting occurring landward. Based on the work of Operto et al., 2006, several areas of intense tectonic activity in the Nankai Trough were identified using full waveform tomography. The upper portion of the upper accretionary prism and the underlying backstop are currently undergoing a great deal of compressional pressure. Several thrust faults were identified by Operto et al., 2006, of which the thrust faults closest to the subduction zone are active. Furthermore, Pisani et al., 2006, identified protothrusts and decollement surfaces along the Nankai Trough. Recently there has been an increase in interest in the release of water from illite clays in subducting sediments. The conversion of smectite to illite (illitization) in subduction zones is likely driven by the higher temperature found in the subduction zone as opposed to non-subducting sediments (Saffer et al., 2005). IODP Expedition 370 will seek to find the temperature limit of the deepest life on Earth by drilling in the Nankai Trough, where heat flow is particularly high near its boundary with the subducting young, hot Philippine Sea tectonic plate. At the targeted site, the geothermal gradient is about four times steeper than elsewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Reaching temperatures of approximately 130 °C in other areas would require collecting cores from approximately 4 kilometers below the seafloor, rather than 1.2 kilometers as planned by Expedition 370. Eventually, IODP Expedition 370 reached a temperature of ~120 °C at 1.2 kilometers below the seafloor with mineral evidence showing that there are localized depths with significantly higher temperatures due to hot fluids.

Seismicity

The Nankai Trough is the near-surface extension of a zone of active seismicity that dips beneath SW Japan. The rupture zone has been subdivided into five areas with respect to seismic modelling (Mitsui et al., 2004). These five subdivisions show interesting differences in

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...

behavior: frequency of earthquakes varying on a 90 to 150-year cycle (Mitsui, et al., 2004; Tanioka et al., 2004), similar slip occurrences along the fault segments, the order of subdivision faulting, and finally, different failure features. Hydrologic observatories were placed in boreholes drilled in 2000 ( IODP sites 808 and 1173) in an attempt to quantify changes in pore-fluid pressure that are a result of the oncoming Philippine Sea plate (Davis et al., 2006). Site 808 is located in the front section of the main thrust fault, while site 1173 is located approximately 11 km from the frontal thrust zone (Hitoshi et al., 2006). Other interesting results of the pressure measurements were the pressure changes that resulted from sediment deformation near boreholes and the effect of very low earthquake swarms at the time of pressure changes (Davis et al., 2006). The working hypothesis is that pressure changes indicate a change in the elastic strain within the formation (Davis et al., 2006). A seaward change in the pressure as measured by the borehole instruments likely indicates a relaxation of the sediments from the previous major thrust earthquake. Furthermore, the short period

seismicity Seismicity is a measure encompassing earthquake occurrences, mechanisms, and magnitude at a given geographical location. As such, it summarizes a region's seismic activity. The term was coined by Beno Gutenberg and Charles Francis Richter in 19 ...

appears to have some degree of dependency on

bathymetric Bathymetry (; ) is the study of underwater depth of ocean floors (''seabed topography''), lake floors, or river floors. In other words, bathymetry is the underwater equivalent to hypsometry or topography. The first recorded evidence of water d ...

highs such as seamounts. This was concluded by Kanda et al., 2004, through inversion analysis of

seismic Seismology (; from Ancient Greek σεισμός (''seismós'') meaning "earthquake" and -λογία (''-logía'') meaning "study of") is the scientific study of earthquakes and the propagation of elastic waves through the Earth or through other ...

data. Historically, the most recent large-scale earthquake to occur in the Nankai Trough was in 1944 off the

Kii Peninsula The is the largest peninsula on the island of Honshū in Japan. It is named after the ancient Kii Province. Overview The area south of the “ Central Tectonic Line” is called , and is home to reef-like coral communities which are among ...

. Using recent ocean bottom seismograph studies, it has been determined that most of the seismicity occurs near the trough axis (Obana et al., 2006). Along the western area of the Nankai Trough, seismicity appears to be related to irregularities in crustal structure such as fractures generated from the subducted seafloor, including backarc basin crust of the

Shikoku Basin is the smallest of the List of islands of Japan#Main islands, four main islands of Japan. It is long and between wide. It has a population of 3.8 million (, 3.1%). It is south of Honshu and northeast of Kyushu. Shikoku's ancient names ...

, as well as due to serpentization of uppermost mantle beneath the overriding plate (Obana et al., 2006). Recent large scale earthquakes resulting from subduction along the Nankai Trough have occurred in areas of large scale increases in the dip angle of the subducting plate (Hori et al., 2004).

Petroleum significance

Drill cores from the seaward edge of the Nankai Trough (where the heat flow is one of the highest in the region) reveal that sediments there only reach pre-oil window to early oil window thermal maturities. However, the trough is potentially a major source of hydrocarbon fuel, in the form of methane clathrate. Nevertheless there is no commercial exploitation. At depth in the ocean bottoms, in some cases water can form an ice-like solid structure that has methane trapped in its crystalline lattice, forming

gas hydrates Clathrate hydrates, or gas hydrates, clathrates, hydrates, etc., are crystalline water-based solids physically resembling ice, in which small non-polar molecules (typically gases) or polar molecules with large hydrophobic moieties are trapped i ...

. The source of water for the formation of gas hydrates frequently comes from the dewatering of a subducting slab as well as the overriding plate (Muramatsu et al., 2006). Gas hydrates nearest the trough appear to be sourced mainly from dewatering associated with subduction, while with increasing distance from the trough the sourcing is more a result of lateral movement of methane enriched waters (Muramatsu et al., 2006). This was determined by drilling a series of boreholes and measuring the concentration, as well as radiometric age determination of the halogen elements iodine, bromine, and chlorine (Tomaru et al., 2007). The age determination of the iodine indicated multiple methane sources. It has been estimated that convergent margins may contain up to two-thirds of the total gas hydrate volume on the Earth (Kastner, 2001). The Nankai Trough has been described as containing a large amount of gas hydrates and is one of the best studied sites of gas hydrate formations (Collett, 2002; Saito et al., 2007). The information concerning the gas hydrates in the Nankai Trough was initially published in 2000 by the Japan National Oil Corporations. The data in the news release came from a series of boreholes what were started in the late 1990s. In this area, the main sedimentological controls for the accumulation of gas hydrates are the sand-rich areas of the trough (Collett, 2002). Well coring indicates the presence of at least three gas hydrate zones. Krason, 1994, estimated that there are 0.42 to 4.2×10¹² cubic meters of methane within the gas hydrates. Seismically, the high bottom simulating reflectors are considered indicative of gas hydrates (Colwell et al., 2004). Methane-rich horizons have been identified as areas of higher attenuation of sonic frequencies (10 to 20 kHz) and only slight attenuation of seismic frequencies (30 to 110 Hz) (Matsushima, 2006).

Thermal history

The Nankai accretionary complex is an area with high heat flow. Its thermal history is complex due to multiple heating events or property changes. IODP Expeditions drilled the accretionary complex of the Nankai Trough and reveal the thermal history with drill core analyses. The area was originally a basin (Shikoku Basin) with active hydrothermal activity during its formation. As basin formation stopped and sedimentation took place, the sediments acted like a blanket to trap the heat below. Rapid sedimentation resulted in a greater retention of heat. There was also underground fluid flow with the fluids being much hotter than the present-day temperature of the sediments, which affected mineralization and, potentially, the physical and biological properties of the region.

Note

References

* Baba, T., Cummins, P. R., 2005, Contiguous rupture area of two Nankai Trough earthquakes revealed by high resolution tsunami waveform inversion,

Geophysical Research Letters ''Geophysical Research Letters'' is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal of geoscience published by the American Geophysical Union that was established in 1974. The editor-in-chief is Harihar Rajaram. Aims and scope The journal aims for ra ...

, v. 32, doi:1029/2004GL022320. * Collett, T. S., 2002, Energy resources potential of natural gas hydrates, AAPG Bulletin, v. 86, pp. 1971–92. * Colwell, F., Matsumoto, R., Reed, D., 2004, A Review of gas hydrate, geology and biology of the Nankai Trough, Chemical Geology, v. 205, pp. 391–404. * Davis, E., Becker, K., Wang, K., Obara, K., Ito, Y., Kinoshita, M., 2006, A discrete episode of seismic and aseismic deformation of the Nankai trough subduction zone accretionary prism and incoming Philippine Sea plate, Earth and Planetary Science Letter 242, pp. 73–84. * DeMets, C., Gordon, R., Argus, D., Stein, S., 1990, Current plate motions,

Geophysical Journal International ''Geophysical Journal International'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Deutsche Geophysikalische Gesellschaft (German Geophysical Society). The j ...

, v. 101, pp. 425–478. * Demets, C., Gordon, R., ARgus, D., Stein, S., 1994, Effects of recent revisions to the geomagnetic reversal time scale on estimates of current plate motions, Geophysical Research Letters, v. 21, n. 20 pp. 2191–2194. * Hori, T., Kato, N., Hirahara, K., Baba, T., Keneda, Y., 2004, A numerical simulation of earthquake cycles along the Nakai Trough in southwest Japan: lateral variation in frictional property due to the slab geometry controls the nucleation position, Earth and Planetary Science Letter, v. 22, pp. 215–226. * Kastner, 2001, Gas ydrates in convergent margins: formation, occurrence, geochemistry, and global significance. Natural Gas Hydrates: Occurrence, Distribution and Detection. Geophysical Monograph, vol. 124. American Geophysical Union Washington, DC, pp. 67–86. * Krason, 1994, Study of 21 marine basins indicates wide prevalence of hydrates, Offshore, August, pp. 34–35. * Ike, T., More, G., Okano, T., Kuramoto, S., Taira, A., Along strike changes in basement topography and sediment thickness in the northern Shikoku Basin: Variable inputs to the Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone, EOS Transaction, American Geophyiscal Union, vol. 85, Fall Meeting Supplements. * Katsushisa, K., Masayuki, T., 2004, Short-period seismic radiation zones of a megathrust fault along the Nankai, Trough deduced from inversion analysis of seismic intensity data, Journal of Seismilogical Society of Japan, v. 57, no. 2, pp 153–177. * Matsushima, J., 2006, Seismic wave attenuation in methane hydrate-bearing sediments: Vertical seismic profiling data from the Nankai Trough exploratory well, offshore Tokai, central Japan, ''

Journal of Geophysical Research The ''Journal of Geophysical Research'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal. It is the flagship journal of the American Geophysical Union. It contains original research on the physical, chemical, and biological processes that contribute to the un ...

'', v. 111, B10101, * Hitoshi, M., Masonori, I., Tadanor, G., Takafu, K., 2006, Current research status and meaning of fluid pressure monitoring at the Nankai Trough, Journal of Geography, v. 115, n. 3, pp. 367–382. * Mitsui, N., Hirahara, K., 2004, Simple spring-mass Model simulation of earthquake cycle along the Nankai Trough in Southwest Japan, Pure Applied Geophysics, v. 161, pp. 243302450. * Muramatsu, Y., Doi, T., Tomaru, H., Fehn, U., Takeuchi, R., Matsumote, R., 2006, Hologen concentrations in pore waters and sediments of the Nankai, Trough, Japan: Implications for the origin of gas hydrates, Applied Geochemistry, v. 22, pp. 534–556. * Obana, K., Kodaira, S., Keneda, Y., 2005, Seismicity in the incoming/subducting Philippine Sea plate off the Kii Peninsula, central Nankai trough, Journal of Geophysical Research, v. 110, . * Obana, K., Kodaira, S., Kaneda, Y., 2006, Seismicity related to heterogeneous structure along the western Nankai trough off Shikoku Island, Geophysical Research Letters, . * Operto, S., Virieux, J., Dessa, J., Pascal, G., 2006, Crustal seismic imaging from multifold on bottom seismometer data by frequency domain full waveform tomography: Application to the eastern Nankai trough, Journal of Geophysical Research, v. 111, doi:1029/2005/B003835. * Pisani, P., Reshef, M., Moore, G., 2005, Targeted 3-D prestack depth imaging at Legs 190-196 ODP drill sites (Nankai Trough, Japan),

, v. 32, doi: 10,1029/2005GL024191. * Saffer, D., Underwood, M., McKiernan, A., 2005, Smectitie transformation in the Nankai trough: Effects on subduction zone mechanics and hydrogeology, Paper, No. 245-10, 2005 Salt Lake City Annual Meeting. * Saito, H., Suzki, N., 2007, Terrestria organic matter controlling gas hydrate formation in the Nankai Trough accretionary prism, offshore Shikoku, Japan, Journal of Geochemical Exploration, v. 95, pp. 88–100. * Sella, G., Dixon, T., Mao, A., 2002, REVEL: A model for Recent plate velocities from space geodesy, Journal of Geophysical Research, v. 107, n. B4, . * Spinelli, G., Mozley, P., Tobin, H., Hoffman, N., Bellew, G., 2007, Diagenesisi, sediment strength, and pore collapse in sediment approaching the Nankai Trough subduction zone, GSA Bulletin, v. 119, pp. 377–390. * Steurer, J., Underwood, M, 2003, Clay mineralogy of mudstone from the Nankai Trough reference sites 1173 and 1177 and frontal accretionary prism site 1174, Ms 190SR-211, http://www-odp.tamu.edu/publications/190196SR/211/211_.htm * Takahashi, N., Kodaira, S., Park, J., Deibold, J., 2003, Heterogeneous structure of western Nankai seismogenic zone deduced by multichannel reflection data and wide-angle seismic data,

Tectonophysics Tectonophysics, a branch of geophysics, is the study of the physical processes that underlie tectonic deformation. The field encompasses the spatial patterns of stress, strain, and differing rheologies in the lithosphere and asthenosphere of th ...

, v. 364, pp. 167–190. * Tanioka, Y., Kusunose, T., Babu, T., Haseqawa, Y., 2004, Large earthquake along the Nankai trough, the 1944 Tanankai earthquake (Mw 8.0) and two 2004 Tonankai-oki earthquakes (Mw 7.2 and 7.4), EOS Transactions, AGU, v. 85. * Tomaru, H., Lu, Z., Fehn, U., Muramatsu, Y., Matsumoto, R., 2007, Age variations of pore water iodine in the eastern Nankai Trough, Japan: Evidence for different methane sources in a large gas hydrate field, Geology, v. 35, no. 11, pp. 1015–1018. * Volti, T., Kaneda, Y., Zatsepin, S., Crampin, S., 2005, An anomalous spatial pattern of shear-wave spitting observed of Ocean Bottom Seismic data above a subducting seamount in the Nankai Trough, Geophysical Journal International, v. 163, pp. 252–264. * Zhao, S., Wu, X., Hori, T., Smith, A., Kaneda, A., Takemoto, S., 2003, Deformation and stress localization at the Nankai subduction zone, southwest Japan, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, v. 206, pp. 145–160. * Zang, S., Chen, Q., Ning, J., Shen, Z., Liu, Y., 2002, Motion of the Philippine Sea plate consistent with NUVEL-1A model, Geophyiscal Journal International, v. 150, pp. 809–819. {{East Asia plates Geology of Japan Geology of the Pacific Ocean Philippine Sea Seismic faults of Japan Subduction zones