Temporal relationship between the 2000 Miyake–Kozu seismovolcanic activity and the 2000 Tokai slow-slip event

Abstract

We investigated the temporal relationship between the two events, namely, the seismovolcanic activity near the Miyakejima and Kozushima islands and the slow-slip event along the plate boundary in the Tokai district. The islands are located on the east of Tokai, and the Tokai slow-slip event was discovered immediately after the large crustal deformation caused by the volcanic activity in the Miyakejima–Kozushima regions ceased. However, the order of occurrence of these events is still controversial and its recognition will help us to understand the tectonic processes of the central part of Japan, where many volcanic and seismic activities occur. For this purpose, we applied the statistical approach (Kawamura, M., Yamaoka, K., 2006. Spatiotemporal characteristics of the displacement field revealed with principal component analysis and the mode-rotation technique, Tectonophys., 419, 55–73), which consists of principal component analysis (PCA) and a mode rotation procedure, to the displacement field provided by the nationwide GPS network (GEONET) in order to obtain the characteristic structures of spatiotemporal crustal deformation caused by the above two events. We divided the time period of analysis into two sections (namely, June 26, 1999 to June 25, 2000 and June 26, 2000 to June 25, 2002) by the day when the magma intrusion occurred beneath the Miyakejima volcano on June 26, 2000. The spatial and temporal modes for the first time period did not indicate any significant spatiotemporal patterns corresponding to the two events. This indicates the absence of episodic crustal deformations during this time period. On the contrary, the modes for the latter time period included the changes caused by these events. The two major modes included the spatiotemporal structures of the first and latter half periods of the Miyake–Kozu seismovolcanic activity. The characteristic pattern of the crustal deformation corresponding to the Tokai slow-slip event was found in the fourth mode, which was prominent after the beginning of the Miyake–Kozu seismovolcanic activity. From these results, we conclude that the crustal deformation caused by the Tokai slow-slip event did not start before the Miyake–Kozu seismovolcanic activity.