Plate Boundaries and Natural Hazards, Geophysical Monograph 219, First Edition. Edited by João C. Duarte and Wouter P. Schellart. © 2016 American Geophysical Union. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. “With firm geological foundations and major earthquakes rare, Fukushima is a safe and secure place to do business.” Fukushima Prefecture Website [Cyranoski, 2011] Promise and Paradox: Why Im...

Introduction. The once popular idea that changes in planetary volume play an important role in terrestrial orogeny and tectonics [ I ,2] was generally discarded with the acceptance of plate tectonics. It is nonetheless likely that the Earth has been steadily cooling over the last 3-4 billion years [e.g., 3,4], and the global contraction that accompanied such cooling would have led to a secular ...