The development of a diatom-based transfer function along the Pacific coast of eastern Hokkaido, northern Japanâ•flan aid in paleoseismic studies of the Kuril subduction zone

This paper provides a dataset to develop a diatom-based transfer function, which is applicable to paleoseismic studies at southwestern Kuril subduction zone, northern Japan. Modern diatom samples were collected from five transects from saltmarshes of Lakes Akkeshi and Onnetoh along the Pacific coast of eastern Hokkaido. The relationships between diatom species and environmental variables were elucidated by canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) and partial CCAs. Partial CCAs associated with Monte Carlo permutation tests show that elevation accounts for a significant portion of the total variance in the diatom data. Therefore, statistically significant transfer functions quantifying the relationship between modern diatom assemblages and elevation were developed using weighted averaging partial least squares and applied to fossil diatom assemblages from Lake Onnetoh. The reconstructed curve of elevations contains five emergence and four submergence events and the transfer functions calculated the amplitude of four of the emergence events to be at least 1 m. The results are consistent with paleoecological data produced by previous studies. If these events represent uplift associated with interplate earthquake and subsidence during an interseismic period along the Kuril subduction zone, transfer functions of eastern Hokkaido can contribute to reconstruction of the recurrence intervals and the amplitude of earthquakes. Comments Postprint version. Published in Quaternary Science Reviews, Volume 23, Issues 23-24, 2004, pages 2467-2484. Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2004.05.006 This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/ees_papers/40 The development of a diatom-based transfer function along the Pacific coast of eastern Hokkaido, northern Japan – an aid in paleoseismic study of the Kuril subduction zone Yuki Sawai, Benjamin P. Horton, and Tamotsu Nagumo *1 Active Fault Research Center, Geological Survey of Japan, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Site C7 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba 305-8567 Japan *2 Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6316, USA *3 Department of Biology, The Nippon Dental University, Fujimi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8159, Japan Headings: Quantitative relative sea-level reconstruction in Japan *Corresponding author: Yuki SAWAI, [email protected]