Refine
Has Fulltext
- no (3)
Language
- English (3)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (3)
Keywords
- Air showers (1)
- Cherenkov Telescopes (1)
- Cosmogenic nuclides (1)
- Erosion (1)
- ISM: clouds (1)
- Japan (1)
- Landslides (1)
- Sediment budget (1)
- Subduction zone (1)
- TeV gamma-ray astronomy (1)
Institute
Quantifying volumes and rates of delivery of terrestrial sediment from island arcs to subduction zones is indispensable for refining estimates of the thickness of trench fills that may eventually control the location and timing of submarine landslides and tsunami-generating mega-earthquakes. Despite these motivating insights, knowledge about the rates of erosion and sediment export from the Japanese islands to their Pacific subduction zones remains patchy regardless of the increasing availability of highly resolved data on surface deformation, climate, geology, and topography. Traditionally, natural erosion rates across the island arc have been estimated from regression of topographic catchment metrics and reservoir sedimentation rates that were recorded over several years to decades. We review current research in this context, correct for a systematic bias in one of the most widely used predictions, and present new estimates of decadal to millennial-scale erosion rates of Japan's terrestrial inner forearc. We draw on several independent and unprecedented inventories of mass wasting, reservoir sedimentation, and concentrations of cosmogenic Be-10 in river sands. We find that natural Be-10-derived denudation rates of several mm yr(-1) in the Japanese Alps have been sustained over several centuries to millennia, and are, within error, roughly consistent with sediment yields inferred from artificial reservoir sedimentation. Local exceptions may likely result from release of sediment storage or regional landsliding episodes that trigger transient sediment pulses. Our synopsis further reveals that catchments draining Japan's eastern seaboard differ distinctly in their tectonic, lithological, topographic, and climatic characteristics between the Tohoku, Japanese Alps, and Nankai inner forearc segments, which is underscored by a marked asymmetric pattern of erosion rates along the island arc. Erosion rates are highest (up to at least 3 mm yr(-1)) in the Japanese Alps that mark the collision of two subduction zones, where high topographic relief, hillslope and bedrock-channel steepness foster rapid denudation by mass wasting. Comparable, if slightly lower, erosion rates characterise the Nankai inner forearc in southwest Japan, most likely due to higher typhoon-driven rainfall totals and variability rather than its high topographic relief. In contrast, our estimated erosion and flux rates are lowest in the Tohoku inner forearc catchments that feed sediment into the Japan Trench. We conclude that collisional mountain building of the Japanese Alps drives some of the highest erosion rates in the island arc despite similar uplift and precipitation controls in southwest Japan. We infer that, prior to extensive river damming, reservoir construction, and coastal works, the gross of Japan's total sediment export to the Pacific Ocean entered the accretionary margin of the Nankai Trough as opposed to the comparatively sediment-starved Japan Trench. Compared to documented contemporary rates of sediment flux from mountainous catchments elsewhere in the Pacific, the rivers draining Japan's inner forearc take an intermediate position despite high relief, steep slopes, very high seismicity, and frequent rainstorms. However, the average rates of millennial-scale denudation in the Japanese Alps particularly are amongst the highest reported worldwide.
Local mismatches between these late Holocene and modern rates emphasise the anthropogenic fingerprint on sediment retention that may have significantly reduced the island arc's mass flux to its subduction zones, as is the case elsewhere in east and southeast Asia. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Introducing the CTA concept
(2013)
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a new observatory for very high-energy (VHE) gamma rays. CTA has ambitions science goals, for which it is necessary to achieve full-sky coverage, to improve the sensitivity by about an order of magnitude, to span about four decades of energy, from a few tens of GeV to above 100 TeV with enhanced angular and energy resolutions over existing VHE gamma-ray observatories. An international collaboration has formed with more than 1000 members from 27 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and North and South America. In 2010 the CTA Consortium completed a Design Study and started a three-year Preparatory Phase which leads to production readiness of CTA in 2014. In this paper we introduce the science goals and the concept of CTA, and provide an overview of the project.
The H.E.S.S. Collaboration has discovered a new very high energy (VHE, E > 0.1 TeV) gamma-ray source, HESS J1741-302, located in the Galactic plane. Despite several attempts to constrain its nature, no plausible counterpart has been found so far at X-ray and MeV/GeV gamma-ray energies, and the source remains unidentified. An analysis of 145-h of observations of HESS J1741-302 at VHEs has revealed a steady and relatively weak TeV source (similar to 1% of the Crab Nebula flux), with a spectral index of Gamma = 2.3 +/- 0.2(stat) +/- 0.2(sys), extending to energies up to 10 TeV without any clear signature of a cut-off. In a hadronic scenario, such a spectrum implies an object with particle acceleration up to energies of several hundred TeV. Contrary to most H.E.S.S. unidentified sources, the angular size of HESS J1741-302 is compatible with the H.E.S.S. point spread function at VHEs, with an extension constrained to be below 0.068 degrees at a 99% confidence level. The gamma-ray emission detected by H.E.S.S. can be explained both within a hadronic scenario, due to collisions of protons with energies of hundreds of TeV with dense molecular clouds, and in a leptonic scenario, as a relic pulsar wind nebula, possibly powered by the middle-aged (20 kyr) pulsar PSR B1737-30. A binary scenario, related to the compact radio source 1LC 358.266+0.038 found to be spatially coincident with the best fit position of HESS J1741-302, is also envisaged.