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Kuril–Kamchatka Trench

Oceanic trench in the northwest Pacific

Summary

Oceanic trench in the northwest Pacific

Topographic image of the northwest Pacific including the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench.

The Kuril–Kamchatka Trench or Kuril Trench (, Kurilo-Kamchatskii Zhyolob) is an oceanic trench in the northwest Pacific Ocean. It lies off the southeast coast of Kamchatka and parallels the Kuril Island chain to meet the Japan Trench east of Hokkaido. It extends from a triple junction with the Ulakhan Fault and the Aleutian Trench near the Commander Islands, Russia, in the northeast, to the intersection with the Japan Trench in the southwest.

The trench formed as a result of the subduction zone, which formed in the late Cretaceous, that created the Kuril island arc as well as the Kamchatka volcanic arc. The Pacific plate is being subducted beneath the Okhotsk plate along the trench, resulting in intense volcanism.

The maximum depth of the trench is reported in peer-reviewed academic papers as 9,600 meters.

History

The trench was first discovered during an oceanographic and hydrographic survey by the USS Tuscarora. The ship had detected a depth of 4655 fathoms.

Tectonics

Map of earthquake locations, showing depth contours on top of downgoing slab

At the Kuril–Kamchatka Trench, the Pacific plate is subducting beneath the Okhotsk plate, a minor tectonic plate formerly considered to be part of the North American plate. The convergence rate ranges from ≈75 mm/yr in the north to ≈83 mm/yr at the southern end. Obliquity of convergence increases to the south, where the transpressional stress is partitioned into trench-normal thrust earthquakes and trench-parallel strike-slip earthquakes. This partitioning results in westward translation of the Kurile forearc relative to the North American plate.

Associated seismicity

Major earthquakes associated with the subduction zone:

Date	Location	Magnitude
3 February 1923	Kamchatka, Russia
13 April 1923	Kamchatka, Russia
2 March 1933	Sanriku-oki, Japan
4 November 1952	Kamchatka, Russia
6 November 1958	Kuril Islands, Russia
13 October 1963	Kuril Islands, Russia
4 October 1994	Kuril Islands, Russia
25 September 2003	Hokkaido, Japan
15 November 2006	Kuril Islands, Russia
24 May 2013	Sea of Okhotsk
18 July 2017	Kamchatka, Russia
25 March 2020	Kamchatka, Russia
29 July 2025	Kamchatka, Russia

References

Kamenev, Gennady M.. (10 February 2022). "Macrofauna and Nematode Abundance in the Abyssal and Hadal Zones of Interconnected Deep-Sea Ecosystems in the Kuril Basin (Sea of Okhotsk) and the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench (Pacific Ocean)".
(2020). "Will the "top five" deepest trenches lose one of their members?". Elsevier BV.
ThebergeAuthor, Albert E.. (2009-03-24). "Thirty Years of Discovering the Mariana Trench".
Rhea, S., et al., 2010, [https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1083/c/ Seismicity of the Earth 1900–2007, Kuril-Kamchatka arc and vicinity], U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2010-1083-C, 1 map sheet, scale 1:5,000,000 accessed 25 October 2022
(2013-05-25). "M8.3 – Sea of Okhotsk". United States Geological Survey.

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

landforms-of-asia landforms-of-the-kuril-islands kamchatka-peninsula oceanic-trenches-of-the-pacific-ocean subduction-zones landforms-of-russia landforms-of-sakhalin-oblast geology-of-the-russian-far-east

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