A research group consisting of Professor Takeshi Tsuji of the Graduate School of Engineering, Kyushu University, Academic Researcher Andri Hendriana, and Kota Himoto, a graduate student of the Faculty of Engineering, has been working in the hydrothermal circulation area of ​​the Okinawa Trough shaft where no gas layer has been discovered so far. I found a large gas layer.

 According to Kyushu University, the research group will automate the work that has been done manually in the analysis of seismic surveys that visualize the underground structure, and by incorporating advanced analysis algorithms, it will be possible to image the underground structure with high resolution. developed.

 When this method was applied to the data acquired at the Okinawa Trough shaft around the Iheya North Sea Hill, an unknown large gas layer was found.This gas layer is only known to be over 5 km horizontal and is thought to contain methane.The hydrothermal circulation area is a place where the existence of the gas layer was not known so far, and it seems to be a new type of gas layer.
Not only can it be used as a resource in the future, but it can be estimated that the gas layer contains carbon dioxide, so it is considered to be an important discovery for understanding the exchange of carbon dioxide inside the earth and in the ocean. Be done.

 The research group is discovering a new gas layer off the Kii Peninsula by a similar method.In the future, we will try to discover a new gas layer around Japan by utilizing this method.

Paper information:[Geophysical Research Letters] Large Gas Reservoir along the Rift Axis of a Continental Back-arc Basin Revealed by Automated Seismic Velocity Analysis in the Okinawa Trough

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