Precise monitoring of subduction plate coupling status on the basis of DONET and borehole data analyses

Abstract

We have detected an event of pore pressure changes (hereafter, we refer it to “pore pressure event”) from borehole stations in real time in March 2020 and March 2023, owing to the network developed by connecting three borehole stations to the Dense Oceanfloor Network System for Earthquakes and Tsunamis (DONET) observatories near the Nankai Trough. Slow earthquake is thought to have longer duration time with smaller stress drop than regular earthquake under the same magnitude. This means that the slow earthquake is more sensitive to external stress perturbation and useful to monitor the processes of stress accumulation and release. However, the pore pressure is also affected by tidal and oceanic fluctuations. To overcome this problem, we use the seafloor pressure gauges of DONET stations nearby boreholes instead of the reference by introducing time lag between them. The obtained results demonstrate the detectability of volumetric strain change for nano-scale. We also investigate the impact of seafloor pressure due to ocean fluctuation on the basis of ocean modelling, which suggests that the decrease of effective normal stress from the onset to the termination of the SSE is explained by Kuroshio meander and may promote updip slip migration, and that the increase of effective normal stress for the short-term ocean fluctuation may terminate the SSE as observed in the Hikurangi subduction zone. The evaluation of the ocean impact is to be applied to a fiber-optic submarine cable, and 50 km-long distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) recordings, where the DAS measurement can be sensitive for hydroacoustic signals in a frequency range from 0.1 to a few tens of Hz.