The thermal evolution of crustal exhumation subsequent to the subduction of the continental margin is modeled through numerical solutions to the two-dimensional heat conduction equation. The boundary conditions used in the modeling are basically constrained by available geophysical and geological observations in the Taiwan area. Temperature distributions are calculated at one-million-year inter...

The 2014 Mw= 8.1 Iquique (Pisagua), Chile, earthquake sequence ruptured a segment of the Nazca-South America subduction zone that last hosted a great earthquake in 1877. The sequence opened >3700 surface cracks in the fore arc of decameter-scale length and millimeter-to centimeter-scale aperture. We use the strikes of measured cracks, inferred to be perpendicular to coseismically applied tensio...

The 2011 Tohoku-Oki Earthquake is a typical subduction-zone earthquake and is the 4th largest earthquake after the beginning of instrumental observation of earthquakes in the 19th century. In fact, the 2011 Tohoku-Oki Earthquake displaced the northeast Japan island arc horizontally and vertically. The displacement largely changed the tectonic situation of the arc from compressive to tensile. Th...

Pacific plate subduction at the Aleutian–Kamchatka juncture, or corner, could be accommodated by either a large bend or a tear in the oceanic lithosphere. In this paper, we describe a number of observations which suggest that the Pacific plate terminates abruptly at the Bering transform zone (TZ). Seismicity shoals along the subduction zone from Southern Kamchatka (600 km) to relatively shallow...

To date, the parameters that determine the rupture area of great subduction zone earthquakes remain contentious. On 1 April 2014, the Mw 8.1 Iquique earthquake ruptured a portion of the well-recognized northern Chile seismic gap but left large highly coupled areas un-ruptured. Marine seismic reflection and swath bathymetric data indicate that structural variations in the subducting Nazca Plate ...

Triassic eclogite and blueschist facies rocks occur as a thrust sheet, 25-km long and over 2-km thick, in an Eocene fold-andthrust belt in northwest Turkey along the İzmir–Ankara suture. The thrust sheet consists mainly of metabasites with minor marble, phyllite and metachert, and rare lenses of serpentinite. The common blueschist facies mineral assemblage in the metabasites is sodic amphibole ...

In the forearc region, aqueous fluids are released from the subducting slab at a rate depending on its thermal state. Escaping fluids tend to rise vertically unless they meet permeability barriers such as the deformed plate interface or the Moho of the overriding plate. Channeling of fluids along the plate interface and Moho may result in fluid overpressure in the oceanic crust, precipitation o...

[1] Coastal stratigraphy of eastern Hokkaido indicates that decimeters of coastal uplift occurred repeatedly in the late Holocene. Employing radiocarbon dating and tephrochronology, we identify along a 100 km length of the Kuril subduction zone six uplift events since 2,800 years B.P. Uplift events occur at the same frequency as unusually high tsunamis. Each coastal uplift event, which occurs o...