Trench triple junction off Central Japan—preliminary results of French-Japanese 1984 Kaiko cruise, Leg 2

Abstract

Leg 2 of the French-Japanese 1984 Kaiko cruise has surveyed the trench triple junction off central Japan, where the Japan, Izu-Bonin and Sagami Trenches intersect. The Izu-Bonin Trench is deeper than the Japan Trench and filled by a thick turbiditic series. Its anomalous depth is explained by the westward retreat of the edge of the northwestward moving Philippine Sea plate. On the contrary to what happens in the Japan Trench, horst and graben structures of the Pacific plate obliquely enters the Izu-Bonin Trench, suggesting that the actual boundary between these two trenches is located to the north of the triple junction. The inner wall of the Izu-Bonin Trench is characterized in the triple junction area by a series of slope basins whose occurrence is related to the dynamics of this area. The northernmost basin is overthrust by the edge of the fore-arc area of the Northeast Japan plate. The plate boundary is hardly discernible further east, which makes it impossible to locate precisely the triple junction itself. These features suggest that large intra-plate deformation occurs there due to the interaction of the plates involved in the triple junction and the weak mechanical strength of the wedge-shaped margin of the overriding plates.