Dewatering and extensional deformation of the Shikoku Basin hemipelagic sediments in the Nankai Trough

Abstract

The Shikoku Basin hemipelagic sequence, which underlies the Nankai Trough wedge, S.W. Japan, thins by 50% between the outer edge of the trench wedge and DSDP Site 582, 14 km arcward. A sedimentation model, which incorporates changes in sedimentation rates with time and with distance from the trench wedge toe, indicates that 57% of the total thinning occurs as a result of temporally varying sedimentation rates and a time transgressive facies boundary between the trench wedge turbidites and the underlying hemipelagites. Burial-induced consolidation beneath the wedgeshaped turbiditic overburden, accounts for the remaining 43% of arcward thinning within the hemipelagic unit. Rapid dewatering, modeled as one-dimensional consolidation suggests that the excess pore water pressures are quite low during this progressive dewatering. Thus, high pore water pressures should not be assumed to occur universally in convergent margin settings. Normal faults and vein structures in the hemipelagites suggest near-horizontal extension in addition to vertical consolidation. The estimates of excess pore water pressures together with fault geometries and horizontal extensional strains, determined from the geometry of the subducting oceanic plate, can be used to constrain the stress conditions at failure. The expulsion of hot water from the rapidly dewatering sediments in the Nankai Trough may help to explain anomalously high heat flow in the central part of the trough.