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Research Purpose

• “Lithosphere Dynamics Research” mainly focuses on the ocean lithosphere and its dynamic processes. Geophysical observations, geological surveys, laboratory experiments and numerical simulations will be integrated into a comprehensive understanding of various spatial and temporal scale variations of lithosphere from plate motion to microscopic phenomena in sediments.

Lithosphere Structure Imaging Research Team

• Lithosphere Structure Imaging Team conducts seismic surveys using active and passive sources to understand seismic structures of ocean lithosphere. Our research activities are composed of five themes related to the subduction process and ocean lithosphere evolution.
1) Technical developments on data-acquisition and processing are conducted for the active and passive source surveys.
2) Seismic imaging of ocean lithosphere in subduction zone clarifies control-factors of tsunami earthquakes.
3) Studies at Izu-Bonin arc resolve the histories of island-arc evolution and back-arc spreading.
4) Formation process of large igneous provinces (LIPs) is clarified through the case studies at Ontong-Java Plateau.
5) Seismic imaging will be integrated with other studies on the large earthquake generation to establish a comprehensive understanding of the asperity of earthquake.


• These researches contribute to IODP by the riser drilling vessel, Chikyu.

Seismic images of a volcanic front and rear-arc along the Izu-Bonin arc (Kodaira et al., 2008)

3D prestack depth migrated volumes of the earthquake fault in the Nankai trough.
Blue lines show the intraoceanic thrusts that have strong and continuous reflections. (Tsuji et al., 2009)

Subseafloor Dynamics Research Team

• Our research target is to understand the deformation processes caused by earthquakes or tsunamis, mass/heat migration in subseafloor hydrothermal or cold seep systems, and the evolution of oceanic lithosphere, through insitu, high-resolution and closely-spaced mapping of geophysical, geological and geochemical properties.

Earth Surface Dynamics and its Predictive Modeling Research Team

• The goal of our team is to predict past and future of the phenomena evolving in the Earth’s surface, such as plate motion, formation of accretionary prism, fault motion and so on, not based on imagination from observed data but based on physical models. For that purpose, we need to understand comprehensively the dynamics in the Earth surface. Thus, we investigate physical and chemical processes in wide rage of spatial scales from mineral to the crust, and construct models that unify such processes. The specific research themes are as follows.
(1) Investigation of the mechanism that most of the giant earthquakes (magnitude~9) occur along the subduction zones where accretionary prism is well-developed.
(2) Development new technologies for experiment and analysis of various phenomena in Earth science, such as discontinuous motion, long term deformation and fracture, phase transition, and so on. Such technologies will be applied also in other fields for practical use.
(3) Investigation of how the plate motion is generated and development a method for modeling intermittent motion in the Earth surface. Using the model, we will simulate the long term motion from the initial Earth condition, reproduce spontaneous plate motion, and predict final state of it.

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