Coseismic and Tectonic Time-Scale Deformations of an Island Arc Based on Studies of East Coast of Kamchatka Peninsula (Far East, Russia)

Abstract

Geologic structure of the late Holocene accumulative marine terrace on the coast of Kamchatka Bay (Kamchatka Peninsula) has been studied. The ages and relative hypsometric position of beach ridges composing the terrace allowed us to identify two types of vertical movements of the coast: periodic fast (coseismic) and slow time-scale uplift or subsidence. Large-amplitude vertical coseismic movements (up to 1‒2 meters) occur on average once in about 1200‒1300 years, and slow movements occur at an average rate from a fraction of a millimeter to about 2 mm per year. Coseismic motions represent relaxation of elastic deformations accumulated during the interseismic interval of the seismic cycle, neither exceed them nor accumulate. Slow motions set the general trend of vertical deformations of the coast. It is assumed that the subsiding central parts of the eastern bays of Kamchatka Peninsula (Avachinsky, Kronotsky and Kamchatsky) and depressions between the eastern peninsulas (Kronotsky, Shipunsky) and the main massif of Kamchatka form an arc-parallel extension zone, which is nearest to the deep-water trench, and that extension is caused by the migration of the subducted part of the Pacific plate toward the Pacific Ocean. Under the eastern Shipunsky and Kronotsky peninsulas, the arc-normal extension of the earth’s crust of the Kamchatka segment of the Kuril-Kamchatka island arc is replaced by a zone of transverse compression.