Skip to Main content Skip to Navigation
Journal articles

Unexpected biotic resilience on the Japanese seafloor caused by the 2011 Tohoku-Oki tsunami

Takashi Toyofuku 1 Pauline Duros 1 Christophe Fontanier 2, 3 Briony Mamo 1 Sabrina Bichon 3 Roselyne Buscail 4 Gérard Chabaud 3 Bruno Deflandre 3 Sarah Goubet 3 Antoine Grémare 3 Christophe Menniti 4 Minami Fujii 5 Kiichiro Kawamura 5 Karoliina Annika Koho 6, 7 Atsushi Noda 8 Yuichi Namegaya 8 Kazumasa Oguri 1 Olivier Radakovitch 9 Masafumi Murayama 10 Lennart Jan De Nooijer 11 Atushi Kurasawa 1 Nina Ohkawara 1 Takashi Okutani 1 Arito Sakaguchi 1, 5 Frans Jorissen 12 Gert-Jan Reichart 6, 11 Hiroshi Kitazato 1
1 JAMSTEC - Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology
2 LPG - Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique [UMR 6112]
3 EPOC - Environnements et Paléoenvironnements OCéaniques
4 CEFREM - Centre de Formation et de Recherche sur les Environnements Méditérranéens
5 Yamaguchi University [Yamaguchi]
6 Department of Earth Sciences [Utrecht]
7 Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences [Helsinki]
8 Geological Survey of Japan
9 CEREGE - Centre européen de recherche et d'enseignement des géosciences de l'environnement
10 Center for Advanced Marine Core Research
11 NIOZ - Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research
12 BIAF - Bio-Indicateurs Actuels et Fossiles
Abstract : On March 11th, 2011 the Mw 9.0 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake resulted in a tsunami which caused major devastation in coastal areas. Along the Japanese NE coast, tsunami waves reached maximum run-ups of 40 m, and travelled kilometers inland. Whereas devastation was clearly visible on land, underwater impact is much more difficult to assess. Here, we report unexpected results obtained during a research cruise targeting the seafloor off Shimokita (NE Japan), shortly (five months) after the disaster. The geography of the studied area is characterized by smooth coastline and a gradually descending shelf slope. Although high-energy tsunami waves caused major sediment reworking in shallow-water environments, investigated shelf ecosystems were characterized by surprisingly high benthic diversity and showed no evidence of mass mortality. Conversely, just beyond the shelf break, the benthic ecosystem was dominated by a low-diversity, opportunistic fauna indicating ongoing colonization of massive sand-bed deposits.
Keywords : Biodiversity Palaeoceanography
Document type :
Journal articles
Complete list of metadata
https://hal-univ-perp.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01287834
Contributor : Olivier Savoyat <>
Submitted on : Monday, March 14, 2016 - 12:22:40 PM
Last modification on : Saturday, October 24, 2020 - 4:12:02 PM
Long-term archiving on: : Sunday, November 13, 2016 - 6:08:22 PM

Files

Vignette du document
srep07517.pdf
Publication funded by an institution

Licence

Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Identifiers

Collections

UNIV-PERP | CNRS | UNIV-ANGERS | EPHE | CDF | INSU | UNIV-NANTES | AGROPOLIS | UNIV-AMU | CEREGE | OSU-INSTITUT-PYTHEAS | IRD | INRA | LPG | INRAE | PSL

Citation

Takashi Toyofuku, Pauline Duros, Christophe Fontanier, Briony Mamo, Sabrina Bichon, et al.. Unexpected biotic resilience on the Japanese seafloor caused by the 2011 Tohoku-Oki tsunami. Scientific Reports, Nature Publishing Group, 2014, 4, pp.7517. ⟨10.1038/srep07517⟩. ⟨hal-01287834⟩

Export

BibTeX TEI DC DCterms EndNote

Share

Metrics

Record views

4097

Files downloads

840