著者

岡村 行信

出版者

Japanese Society for Active Fault Studies

雑誌

活断層研究 (ISSN:09181024)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.2008, no.28, pp.31-39, 2008

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Method and result of offshore active fault survey were reviewed. Acoustic and seismic waves are widely used for offshore topographic and geologic surveys. Higher frequency acoustic waves have high-resolution but attenuate rapidly in water or sediments, thus they are mainly used for seafloor topographic survey or shallow high-resolution seismic profiling survey. Multi-narrow beam sounding provided evolutionary detailed seafloor topographic maps that clearly show fault traces. Lower frequency seismic waves are widely used for survey of deep sea and deep subsurface geology, but their resolution is generally too low to evaluate the activity of faults in late Pleistocene or Holocene time. Multi-channel seismic profiling survey and digital signal processing technology tremendously improved quality of seismic profiles. Offshore active fault maps around Japan were published in 1980's and 1990's based mainly on analyses of single channel seismic profiles. The events of active fault have been identified only in shallow bay areas using high-resolution seismic profiles and sediment cores. In contrast, it is generally difficult to determine events in open sea areas, because of low quality of seismic profiles. Multi-channel seismic profiling system using a high-frequency sound source made it possible to obtain high quality seismic profiles in the open shallow sea area and showed an active fault in the source area of the 2007 Noto-Hanto earthquake. In the deep sea, low-frequency seismic profiling system generally show clear geologic structure including active faults, but it is difficult to determine their activity in the late Pleistocene and Holocene period. Analyses of turbidites and dive surveys using submersibles have been conducted to determine the ancient events of fault activity in the deep-sea area. There is no enough data of offshore active faults, especially in very shallow marine area along coast.