** Progress in Earth and Planetary Science is the official journal of the Japan Geoscience Union, published in collaboration with its society members.
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Preface
Solid earth sciences
202410202410
Preface for article collection “10 years after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake: a milestone of solid earth science”
Ryota Hino, Toru Matsuzawa, Takeshi Iinuma, Shuichi Kodaira, Masaki Yamada, Roland BürgmannRyota Hino, Toru Matsuzawa, Takeshi Iinuma, Shuichi Kodaira, Masaki Yamada and Roland Bürgmann
Many scientific discoveries have been made since the 2011 Tohoku earthquake (or Tohoku-Oki earthquake in many papers including those in this SPEPS, occurred on March 11, 2011, M 9.0), thanks in large part to the enormous amount and quality near-field observations and the existing scientific knowledge about the northeastern Japan arc that had already accumulated before the earthquake (e.g., Lay 2018; Goto et al. 2021; Uchida and Burgmann 2021). The earthquake highlighted dynamic frictional behaviors of the shallowest parts of the subduction interface, which had previously been regarded as mostly aseismic. An increasing amount of evidence for spatial correlation between the distribution of interplate faulting events of various sizes and time scales and the structural heterogeneity of the plate boundary have been presented. Several stress re-distribution processes were activated after the earthquake, including viscoelastic relaxation, aseismic afterslip and fluid remobilization. These transients occurred in both the overriding and incoming plates and the underlying mantle asthenosphere, and insights gained from studying these postseismic processes have greatly improved our overall understanding of subduction zone dynamics. Abundant records of the associated tsunami provided new insights into various processes during the generation, propagation, and inundation of tsunamis. The earthquake also provided a unique opportunity to compare the fault rupture models obtained from modern observations with those of past earthquakes based on geological records, allowing for improvements in the reconstructed recurrence history of massive earthquakes in the region. A collection of research regarding the Tohoku earthquake is expected to benefit our general understanding of infrequent gigantic (M > 9) subduction earthquakes around the world. For this special issue of SPEPS, we invited authors to contribute their own latest research as well as reviews on the seismotectonics along the northeastern Japan margin from various aspects related to the Tohoku earthquake.
