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Unusually large earthquakes inferred from tsunami deposits along the Kuril trench

Abstract

The Pacific plate converges with northeastern Eurasia at a rate of 8–9 m per century along the Kamchatka, Kuril and Japan trenches1. Along the southern Kuril trench, which faces the Japanese island of Hokkaido, this fast subduction has recurrently generated earthquakes with magnitudes of up to 8 over the past two centuries2,3,4,5,6. These historical events, on rupture segments 100–200 km long, have been considered characteristic of Hokkaido's plate-boundary earthquakes7,8. But here we use deposits of prehistoric tsunamis to infer the infrequent occurrence of larger earthquakes generated from longer ruptures. Many of these tsunami deposits form sheets of sand that extend kilometres inland from the deposits of historical tsunamis. Stratigraphic series of extensive sand sheets, intercalated with dated volcanic-ash layers, show that such unusually large tsunamis occurred about every 500 years on average over the past 2,000–7,000 years, most recently 350 years ago. Numerical simulations of these tsunamis are best explained by earthquakes that individually rupture multiple segments along the southern Kuril trench. We infer that such multi-segment earthquakes persistently recur among a larger number of single-segment events.

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Figure 1: Maps of study area.
Figure 2: Summary of tsunami deposits in eastern Hokkaido and comparison with modelled inundation.
Figure 3: Evidence for outsize tsunamis at Kiritappu.
Figure 4: Evidence for outsize tsunamis at Harutori-ko.
Figure 5

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Acknowledgements

We thank K. Hirakawa, Y. Nishimura, Y. Sawai, A. Moore, H. Kelsey and E. Hemphill-Haley for guidance in the field, and F. Akiba for diatom analysis. We also thank R. Stein, J. Bourgeois, K. Shimazaki, S. Toda and H. Kelsey for comments on the manuscript. The work formed part of the US-Japan Common Agenda for earthquake and tsunami studies.

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Correspondence to Kenji Satake.

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Supplementary information

41586_2003_BFnature01864_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Supplementary Figure 1: a Index map to extensive sand sheets and other evidence for unusually large tsunamis in eastern Hokkaido. b Tsunami heights at shore (PDF 88 kb)

41586_2003_BFnature01864_MOESM2_ESM.doc

Supplementary Table 1: Sites where extensive tsunami deposits have been identified along the eastern Hokkaido coast (DOC 104 kb)

41586_2003_BFnature01864_MOESM3_ESM.doc

Supplementary Table 2: Major-element analyses of tephra samples correlated with widespread layers listed at top (DOC 63 kb)

41586_2003_BFnature01864_MOESM4_ESM.doc

Supplementary Table 3: Environmental preferences assumed for diatom taxa identified from sand and peat in core at Kiritappu site (Fig. 3b, d). *, dominant species in core samples (DOC 32 kb)

Supplementary Table 4: Limiting-maximum ages of inferred tsunami deposits beneath Haritori-ko (DOC 29 kb)

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Nanayama, F., Satake, K., Furukawa, R. et al. Unusually large earthquakes inferred from tsunami deposits along the Kuril trench. Nature 424, 660–663 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01864

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