Tears or thinning? Subduction structures in the Pacific plate beneath the Japanese Islands

Abstract

The nature of a subduction zone at depth is affected by the evolution of its tectonic system, and the geometry of the trench line can change over time due to slab roll-back or the arrival of a distinctive feature with the incoming oceanic lithosphere. The configuration of the plate has to accommodate such changes with buckling, thinning or the formation of tears depending on the rate of influx to the trench. Tomographic imaging is commonly used to recognise the presence of such tears through marked reductions in wavespeed anomalies in localised zones. A good example is provided by Pacific plate subduction beneath the Japanese Islands. A horizontal tear in the plate below 300. km depth can be recognised at the southern end of the Izu-Bonin arc associated with the change in slab morphology to the much steeper Mariana arc. Beneath southern Honshu a break in the fast wavespeeds associated with the Pacific plate has been described as a tear based on the evidence of converted phases from the edge of the zone and tensional focal mechanisms for seismic events in the tear zone. In the north, close to the Hokkaido bend in the subduction zone, the reduction in the shear wavespeed anomaly is just as dramatic, but here the characteristics of high frequency guided waves from deep earthquakes indicate continuity of slab material with thinning of the slab. The thinned slab has less wavespeed contrast within the affected cells and so appears in the tomographic images as a weakened anomaly. The various modes of slab deformation represent different ways in which the subducted material accommodates the strains imposed by the evolution of the geometry of the subduction scenario. Not all significant reductions in wavespeed anomalies represent tears and thus it is important that such interpretations be checked against the characteristics of wave propagation through the zone.