Seismic Structure Related to the Philippine Sea Plate Subduction beneath the Nansei-Shoto (Ryukyu) Trench

The Philippine Sea plate (PHS) subduction develops a trench-arc-backarc system at the Nansei-Shoto island arc, southwest of Japan. Its backarc basin, the Okinawa Trough, is the only area around Japan where rifting has been observed at present. In the north of the Nansei-Shoto island arc, the PHS with large bathymetric highs (e.g. the Amami Plateau and the Daito Ridge) subducts approximately perpendicularly to the trench axis. In the southwest, the PHS obliquely subducts with linear seafloor topographies such as the Okinawa-Luzon fracture zone and the Gagua Ridge. We conducted multichannel seismic reflection and wide-angle seismic surveys to obtain inhomogeneous crustal structures related to such complex features of the plate subduction. The seismic lines that we shot across the Nansei-Shoto arc, consisted of two lines in the north and five lines in the southwest. We also shot two along-arc lines in the island arc and forearc areas in the southwest. Since we could not constrain the crustal structure deeper than 10 km precisely by a tomographic inversion of first arrival traveltimes, we carried out two-dimensional forward modeling using several reflection signals from the inner crust and Moho discontinuity. As a result, a middle crust with P wave velocity (Vp) of 5.9-6.5 km/s was detected between an upper and lower crust beneath the arc for all the seismic lines. However, the inner crustal structure largely differs depending on the survey lines. Distribution of low Vp forearc accretionary wedge also varies regionally along the trench axis. High Vp of 4-5 km/s within 2 km below the seafloor and Vp larger than 6 km/s just on the subducting plate boundary characterize the forearc at 125-127 E in the southwest region, which corresponds distinctive high free-air gravity anomaly. We could also obtain clear seismic images of the subducting bathymetric highs in the north and the Okinawa-Luzon fracture zone in the southwest.