Research on seismic activity and crustal deformation monitoring techniques

The crust of the Japanese archipelago deforms due to the subduction of oceanic plates beneath the islands and earthquake fault slips as well as in response to slow slip events and inelastic deformation. In light of the importance of detecting and systematically understanding such crustal activity for the provision of appropriate information, better ways of spotting changes in seismic activity and crustal deformation are currently being developed. Work is also under way to better elucidate the mechanisms behind such activity based on numerical simulation of earthquake cycles.

Estimation of plate coupling distribution using earthquake cycle simulation. The solid curve denotes the anticipated source area along the Nankai trough