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Science 10 December 2004:
Vol. 306. no. 5703, pp. 1918 - 1920
DOI: 10.1126/science.1104895
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Reports

Transient Uplift After a 17th-Century Earthquake Along the Kuril Subduction Zone

Yuki Sawai,1* Kenji Satake,1 Takanobu Kamataki,1 Hiroo Nasu,1,2 Masanobu Shishikura,1 Brian F. Atwater,3 Benjamin P. Horton,4 Harvey M. Kelsey,5 Tamotsu Nagumo,6 Masaaki Yamaguchi7

In eastern Hokkaido, 60 to 80 kilometers above a subducting oceanic plate, tidal mudflats changed into freshwater forests during the first decades after a 17th-century tsunami. The mudflats gradually rose by a meter, as judged from fossil diatom assemblages. Both the tsunami and the ensuing uplift exceeded any in the region's 200 years of written history, and both resulted from a shallow plate-boundary earthquake of unusually large size along the Kuril subduction zone. This earthquake probably induced more creep farther down the plate boundary than did any of the region's historical events.

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 International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 3-2 Oeyama-cho, Goryo, Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto, 610-1192, Japan.
3 U.S. Geological Survey, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195–1310, USA.
4 Sea Level Research Laboratory, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104–6316, USA.
5 Department of Geology, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA 95521, USA.
6 Department of Biology, The Nippon Dental University, Fujimi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8159, Japan.
7 Graduate School of Frontier Science, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: yuki.sawai{at}aist.go.jp

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