CURIE-POINT DEPTH IN NORTHEAST JAPAN AND ITS CORRELATION WITH REGIONAL THERMAL STRUCTURE AND SEISMICITY

Heat flow measurements are high on the back are side and low on the forearc side of the Tohoku are, but convective heat transfer in volcanic areas affects the heat flow measurements, complicating the determination of the thermal structure from heat flow measurements alone. Curie point depths deduced from previous magnetic analyses show a sudden change of the Curie isotherm between the volcanic front and the Japan Trench. A magnetic belt extends from west Hokkaido to the eastern limit of Tohoku. The location is west of and parallel to the Cretaceous subduction zone. To determine the geometry of the source of the magnetic belt, detailed magnetic analyses were carried out using forward modeling and recently developed spectral analysis techniques. The magnetic analyses indicate that sources of the magnetic belt extend to significant depths. The result reveals that the Curie isotherm varies from 10 km in the back are to 20 km or deeper at the eastern limit of Tohoku. The boundary between seismic and aseismic zones in the overriding plate correlates with the inferred Curie isotherm, indicating that seismicity in the overriding plate is related to temperature.