ISCD2016

What's new

July 27, 2016 Thank you for your paricipation. We had 140 participants. Gratitude from organizers.
July 24, 2016 Notice of a special issue in Earth, Planets and Space.
July 17, 2016 Welcome to Takayama! Please register at a registration desk.
July 11, 2016 Information on Registraion, Field Trip, and Notice of photo is updated.

A group photo at International Symposium "Crustal Dynamics 2016" on 20 July, 2016.

Gratitude from organizers

Dear participants of Crustal Dynamics 2016,

Thank you very much for your participation in the International Symposium Crustal Dynamics 2016 in Takayama. It was wonderful to have all of you in Takayama and to have intriguing presentations and discussions. Discussion there is a very important input for the project members to step forward toward our goal of understanding crustal dynamics in a more integrated manner. We appreciate all your presentations and comments during the symposium.

Also please let us express our sincere gratitude to Oohashi-san, Takeuchi-san,Doke-san, Niwa-san, and other field trip leaders for our wonderful field trip to the Atotsugawa fault. We believe that was a very memorable experience for all the participants.

For your information, following five students were awarded the Best Student Paper Award.
Angela Meneses Gutierrez (Nagoya University)
Natalie Higgins (Caltech)
Ayumi S. Okamoto (Hokkaido University)
Yoshihiro Nakamura (Niigata University)
Xuelei Zhang (Nagoya University)

We also hope all the participants enjoyed their stay, beautiful nature, and food in Takayama. Thank you very much again for your participation and we look forward to seeing you in next occasion.

Sincerely yours,

Takeshi Sagiya, on behalf of organizers of ISCD2016

Scope of the symposium

We are pleased to announce that the International Symposium “Crustal Dynamics 2016: Unified Understanding of Geodynamics Processes at Different Time and Length Scales” will be held on 19th-22nd July, 2016 in Takayama city, Gifu prefecture, central Japan. The 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake occurred at an unexpected scale, which recalled us that the generation mechanism of earthquakes had been poorly known. Even, the stress-strain field in the Japanese arc-trench system had not been fully understood. With regard to the stress, whether or not it is low (an order of 1-10 MPa) or high (an order of 100 MPa) has not been solved. On the other hand, it has been known that the strain rate (10^-7/year) determined from the modern space geodetic methods such as GPS is faster by an order of magnitude than the geologically inferred strain rate (10^-8/year). The reason for the discrepancy has not been solved, which may be attributed to inelasticity in the crust, or off-fault deformation. One way to solve these problems is to closely observe postseismic deformation due to both after slip and viscoelastic relaxation after the 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake using geodetic methods, and model it, which has become an important topic of crustal dynamics in the Japanese Islands. Furthermore, it is still very hard to interpret those geodynamic processes at different time and length scales in a unified way. For example, it is difficult to link geologic time-scale (an order of 1-10 million years) tectonic movements such as the development of orogenic belts and mature major faults with geophysical time-scale (an order of 1 second to 1 year) ones such as seismic displacement. Also, it is difficult to understand how microscopic-scale (an order of 1 micron to 1 mm) deformation processes in rocks are related to macroscopic-scale(an order of 10-100 km) fault movements.

Under these circumstances, a new KAKENHI project called “Crustal dynamics” funded by the MEXT started in July, 2014, where six planned areas of research related to this topic are united: (A01) seismic and (A02) geodetic observations, researches on (B01) natural and (B02)experimental rock deformation, (B03) crustal fluids, and (C01) numerical simulations. The goal of this project is the fundamental and unified understanding of “Crustal dynamics” in the Japanese arc-trench system represented by the generation of mega earthquakes, which can be accomplished through the combined researches of the different disciplines mentioned above. In particular, in the Japanese islands where the stress-strain fields were greatly disturbed by the 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake, unexpected tectonic movements are currently occurring. Analyses of these phenomena will perhaps contribute to the correct understanding of stress-strain fields in the Japanese arc-trench system and rheological properties of the constituent rocks.

Such problems of “Crustal dynamics” are common all over the world, in particular, the circum-Pacific region including New Zealand and the Mediterranean region, where the dense geophysical measurements have been also conducted. Further, rock deformation experiments have now been extensively conducted at different laboratories to understand the generation of earthquakes and rheological properties of rocks. Hence, “Crustal dynamics” has now become an internationally hot topic of geosciences. In the International Symposium Crustal Dynamics 2016, twelve top international geoscientists working in the related fields will be invited to discuss with the Japanese colleagues, and we together intend to advance these researches. The new frontier research “Crustal dynamics” is open to all the geoscientists working in the fields, and one important purpose is to grow the geoscientists of new generations. Therefore, we hope that many geoscientists working on related fields including young ones will participate in the International Symposium Crustal Dynamics 2016.

Invited speakers

Jeanne Hardebeck (USGS, USA), Roland Bürgmann (UC Berkely, USA), Yuri Fialko (UC San Diego, USA),

Jean-Philippe Avouac (Univ. Cambridge, UK), Yehuda Ben-Zion (USC, USA), Robert E. Holdsworth (Univ. Durham, UK),

Christopher J. Spiers (Utrecht Univ., Netherlands), Andre Niemeijer (Utrecht Univ., Netherlands),

Yves Guéguen (ENS, France), Kuo-Fong Ma (National Central Univ., Taiwan), Nadia Lapusta (Caltech, USA),

Kelin Wang (Geological Survey of Canada, Canada), and Richard H. Sibson (Univ. Otago, New Zealand)