Deepest ever scientific ocean drilling could hold key to understanding earthquakes

1 October 2007

One of the most ambitious earth science expeditions yet mounted to gain a better understanding of the earthquake process, has begun off the coast of Japan.

Dr Lisa McNeill, of the University of Southampton's School of Ocean & Earth Science, based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, and Joanne Tudge, of the Department of Geology, University of Leicester, are taking part in the multi-disciplinary study of a 'subduction' zone off the Japanese coast, aboard the deep-sea drilling vessel Chikyu (which means 'Planet Earth' in Japanese). This is the maiden scientific voyage of this vessel, which has unique capabilities enabling it to access new regions of the Earth's crust.

Large-scale subduction earthquakes are the world's most powerful seismic events and the cause of major catastrophes, such as the 2004 Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

Japan, which has endured devastating earthquakes in cities such as Kobe in 1995, has made major investments in technology, including Chikyu, to learn more about seismic activity near its shores.

Lisa, a lecturer at Southampton, joins the Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone Experiment (or NanTroSEIZE) expedition, part of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), as a scientific participant, but will also serve as a co-chief scientist on a later phase of the experiment in 2009.

PhD student Joanne Tudge is part of the Geophysics and Borehole Research Group in the Department of Geology at Leicester, which has a long-standing history of providing logging services and expertise for the IODP. Her research focuses on interpreting data from the borehole to better understand the sediments. On this NanTroSEIZE expedition she will be working to classify the rocks and understand the physical properties of the sediments in the subduction zone.

The project is ambitious in scale - the first phase alone is the longest period of scientific ocean drilling ever attempted in one area. In the second phase, colleagues will attempt to break the scientific ocean-drilling depth record by targeting a fault around 3500 m below the sea floor.

During the third phase, the drill ship aims to reach the main plate boundary at 6 km and place long-term monitoring tools. The experiment will take samples and install observatories to assess, for example, how strain is building up on the fault, the effects of fluid on rocks and the physical properties of sediments as they are deformed.

Dr McNeill said, "The scale of this experiment is unprecedented and I am very excited to be taking part. This is an extremely challenging expedition but the results should give us a much greater understanding of the processes responsible for generating earthquakes and tsunami."

The ship sailed from Japan on 21 September and the experiment can be followed on the JAMSTEC website.

Further information

NERC Press Office
Natural Environment Research Council
Polaris House, North Star Avenue
Swindon, SN2 1EU
Tel: 01793 411561
Mob: 07917 557215

Kim Marshall Brown
Press Officer
National Oceanography Centre, Southampton
Tel: 023 8059 6170

Sarah Watts
Media Relations
University of Southampton
Tel: 023 8059 3807

Ather Mirza
Press Office
University of Leicester
Tel: 0116 252 3335

Notes

1. Subduction is the movement of one tectonic plate (the rigid outer layer of the Earth, composed of the crust and upper part of the mantle) beneath another plate when the two plates collide. The movement of the two plates against each other creates very large earthquakes and tsunami.

2.The project (Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone Experiments or NanTroSEIZE) is supported by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), a marine research initiative jointly funded by Japan, the United States, a consortium of European countries, the People's Republic of China, and South Korea. The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) provides the UK's contribution to the IODP through ECORD (the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling).

NanTroSEIZE, and the inaugural expedition which has just begun, is led by chief project scientists Dr Harold Tobin, a marine geologist on the faculty of University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Dr Masa Kinoshita, a marine geophysicist at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science & Technology (JAMSTEC), a leading research institution in Japan.

Press release: 39/07

Deepest ever scientific ocean drilling could hold key to understanding earthquakes

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