The University of Texas leads earthquake research off the coast of Japan

AUSTIN (KXAN) – Off the coast of Japan, one of Earth’s most dangerous fault zones has become the focal point of a decades-long research project by the University of Texas and more than a dozen other countries.

“It has a really long history of what we call great earthquakes,” said Damien Safire, director of the Geophysics Institute at the University of Texas and lead on the project.

What Saver and his team discovered may reshape the way we think about earthquake prediction.

Safer said the fault zone, which is supposed to be nearing the end of the earthquake cycle and a major earthquake, “has not been stressed as much as we thought it would be.”

Signs of stress are expected as an earthquake approaches and is one of the factors scientists use to predict them. If this fault zone, which last triggered a major earthquake in 1946, doesn’t show the signs it should have.

“It throws a bit of a wrench into the business the way we’ve been thinking about these systems,” said Safer.

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The team chose this fault zone for several reasons.

“The Japanese were very interested in it. For them, understanding earthquakes is a matter of national security,” Sfeir said.

The Nankai earthquake of 1946 was the last major earthquake that occurred in the Nankai Basin. (courtesy: public domain)

The rift zone is also a subduction zone similar to that near Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.

“Subduction zones are capable of very large earthquakes, with a magnitude of 9, similar to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.”

This earthquake caused a tsunami that swept through Japan and destroyed part of a nuclear power plant.

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The fault zone, known as the Nankai Trough, last caused a major earthquake 80 years ago. The Nankai earthquake in 1946 killed more than 1,300 people and injured thousands. It scored between 8.1 and 8.4 on the Moment Volume Scale.

Drilling five kilometers in an active rift zone The Chikyu is a specialized scientific drilling ship chartered by the team. (Courtesy of The University of Texas)

To obtain their data, the team made multiple trips to the area and drilled into the rift zone. To reach the required depth, they need their drill to go a mile and a half underwater, and then about two miles into actual land. The exercise was only a mile from the actual fault line.

The team used techniques commonly used by people building oil rigs to drill at this depth. They needed a huge ship, The Chikyu, which they had rented from the Japanese government.

With the drill down, a metal tube was placed to keep the well open.

“This is an active plate boundary, a tectonic plate boundary. So, drilling in some ways is a bit more challenging.”

Given the costs (the cost of chartering a ship and drilling underwater), the job took place over the course of nearly 20 years. The team would go out and dig a little bit and plug the hole and come back later.

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“It’s such an important endeavor that it can’t be done in one season,” Safire said. He’s been on eight missions.

The exercise is equipped with equipment that collects data as it goes.

“How hot is it? What is the pressure?” Sapphire said they looked for cracks in the ground, buckling in the well itself and other signs of stress.

Discover future earthquakes in the depths of the ocean

In 2018, drilling reached its current depth. Hence, the team found that the tension was not as much as they expected. In fact, it was close to zero. This happens when an earthquake recently occurred.

“We predicted that would happen, we would see signs of pressure buildup that would be consistent with this kind of gradual build-up like plates, going beyond each other and that fault line closed until — until the next day an earthquake.”

The team prepares exercises for the descent. (Courtesy: University of Texas) In the deep sea, the rig collected data as it descended. (Courtesy of The University of Texas) Demian Sapphire is Director of the University of Texas Geophysics Institute. He has been on eight expeditions to explore the rift zone. (Courtesy: University of Texas) Researchers around Chikyu believe the data they collect is changing the way we think about earthquakes. (Courtesy of The University of Texas)

The researchers came to several conclusions: either the fault does not need to be stressed to produce a major earthquake or the stress occurs at a much deeper level, closer to the actual fault line.

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The end result was the scariest. The pressure was coming on suddenly, right before a major earthquake.

Saver said the data “is throwing a little bit of a wrench into the business the way we’ve been thinking about these systems.”

The team hopes to return on a future expedition and dig deeper for answers.

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