Circular geomorphologic and geological features in the Japanese islands

Abstract

The available geomorphologic, geological, geophysical, and paleogeographic data were used to identify and reconstruct, to varying degrees of accuracy, dome-block and tectono-magmatic circular uplifts within the Japanese island arc, which contain the main mountain massifs and the centers of orogenic granitoid magmatism on Kyushu, Honshu, Shikoku, and Hokkaido islands. By analogy with the magmatic domes of mountain features in the adjacent continental land (Sikhote-Alin’), they are identified with Cretaceous/Paleogene granitoid focus systems of regional rank. It was found that these elements of the structural setting have preserved their significance up to the present, in spite of the fact that destructive tectonogenetic tendencies have been dominant since the Late Oligocene/Miocene. We also hypothesize that relicts of a major dome-block feature (Nampo) exist within the northern Philippine Sea. The local circular features on these islands reflect the entire diversity of focus formations at volcanic arcs and in the volcano-plutonic belts at active continental margins. Our study showed that the morphotectonic base of the Japanese Islands is not a chaotic collage of terranes, but rather a consolidated system of Cretaceous/Paleogene central-type orogenic uplifts that are evolving in an inherited manner with superimposed Late Cenozoic magmatic, block, and fault features. The Japanese Islands contain an abundance of circular features of varying ranks and ages, indicating the essential control of deep injected dislocations and of the magmatic factor in the structure and evolution of the region.