Tectonic constraints to Cretaceous magmatic arc deduced from detrital heavy minerals in northeastern Japan – evidence from detrital garnets, tourmalines and chromian spinels

Tectonic histories of sedimentary basins in the Cretaceous Japan arc have been assessed to understand the response of the Asian continental margin to the oblique subduction of the Paleo-Pacific (i.e. Kula or Izanagi) Plate beneath the Asian continent during the Early Cretaceous and that which subducted orthogonally in the Late Cretaceous. In the Lower Cretaceous Kuji Group (Santonian–Campanian) of the Kitakami Massif in northern Japan, sandstone petrography and chemistry of detrital heavy mineral grains were performed on sandstones to assess the tectonic environment on the basis of provenance analysis.Sandstone petrography results suggest that the material of the Kuji Group was derived mainly from areas of a Cretaceous volcanic belt (Rebun-Kabato Belt) and from a Jurassic accretionary complex (North Kitakami Terrane), which was intruded by Cretaceous granite, adjacent to the depositional basin. The chemical composition of detrital garnets suggests a North Kitakami Terrane origin, and detrital tourmalines are considered to have been derived mainly from meta-sedimentary rocks. The composition of detrital chromian spinels are compositionally diverse and mainly derived from tholeiitic and intra-plate basalts showing high TiO2 (>about 1.0 wt%) and island arc basalts with moderately low TiO2 (1.0 > TiO2 > 0.5 wt%) and high Cr#. Latter chromian spinels can be considered as a record of island arc activity including high Mg-andesite in Early Cretaceous time. Because adequate source rocks of the spinels are elusive near the basin compared with those of detrital garnets and tourmalines, these rocks are believed to have been disturbed by Cenozoic tectonics and eroded and covered by newly formed volcanic and sedimentary rocks.Comparison of chemical composition of the chromian spinels between Lower and Upper Cretaceous deposits in northern Japan indicates that chromian spinels with very low TiO2 (<0.5 wt%) prevail in the Lower Cretaceous (Aptian–Albian). In contrast, chromian spinels showing moderately low TiO2 predominated in the Upper Cretaceous (Santonian–Campanian). This clear difference suggests the change of oceanic plate motion around Japan arc promoted the change of source rock assemblage and the arc volcanic activity in mid-Cretaceous time. Thus the characteristics of detrital heavy mineral composition of the Kuji Group give the key to clarify the interaction between the swaying of young and hot plate and development of the Cretaceous island arc in eastern Asian margin.ArticleCRETACEOUS RESEARCH.48:39-53(2014)journal articl

Sedimentary environment and paleosols of middle Miocene fluvial and lacustrine sediments in central Japan: Implications for paleoclimate interpretations

Sedimentary facies analysis and description of paleosols were carried out for the middle Miocene Tokiguchi Porcelain Clay Formation (PCF) in central Japan in order to interpret the soil-forming environments during a long hiatus in the Japanese Islands. The sedimentary facies suggests that deposition occurred mainly in a lacustrine environment, with minor channel-fill and debris-flow deposits associated with alluvial fan environments. The coarse-grained sediments, which are inferred to have been deposited in channel-bar and debris-flow deposits, are present only in the marginal area of the sedimentary basin. Mature paleosols are identified in the Tokiguchi PCF, characterized by illuviated clay, identifiable soil horizons including Bt horizons and many in situ plant fossils, and are then similar to Ultisols. Most tree trunk fossils, however, were preserved by burial beneath debris-flow deposits. Most of paleosols formed on lacustrine deposits and were covered by lacustrine clay and silt deposits, without intervening coarse-grained deposits, such as flood-flow deposits. This change of sedimentary facies indicates a dramatic change of hydrologic environment, from stagnant water to entirely desiccated conditions, promoting weathering and soil formation. The relationship between sedimentary facies and Pedotypes, consequently, implies the repetition of specific events, i.e., submergence and emergence of lake bottom, most likely due to formation and drainage of a dammed lake. These isolated events and development of mature paleosols might suggest specific characteristics of middle Miocene weathering conditions, such as seasonally heavy rainfall and/or warm climatic conditions in the Japanese Islands.ArticleSEDIMENTARY GEOLOGY.347:117-129(2017)journal articl

Effect of geological structures, rock weathering, and clay mineralogy in the formation of various landslides along Mugling-Narayanghat road section, Central Nepal Himalaya

The present study was conducted on the landslide prone area around Mugling-Narayanghat road section that consists of Lesser Himalayan and Siwaliks rocks. From more than 250 mapped landslides, ten were selected for detailed study that are supposed to the representative of the whole area. Detailed study showed that large and complex landslides are related to deep rock weathering followed by the intervention of geological structures as faults, joints, and fractures. Large landslides formed by gravitational deformation are related to the rock structures, while rock weathering plays a minor role. Rotational types of landslides are observed in weathered rocks, where the dip direction of the foliation plane plays a principle role. Shallow landslides are common in slopes covered by residual soil or colluviums. Some shallow landslides (rock topples) occur in less weathered rocks where the attitude of the foliation plays a major role, while others (rock plane failure) occur in cut slopes with less weathered rocks. Debris slides/flows occur in colluviums or residual soil covered slopes. In few instances, rock fall may occur on the upper slope, which then is mixed with the colluviums, residual soil, and other materials lying downhill and come down as debris flow. Rock falls are mainly related to the joint pattern and the slope angle and are found in less weathered rocks.ArticleJournal of the Faculty of Science Shinshu University 45: 1-44(2013)departmental bulletin pape

Effect of rock weathering, clay mineralogy, and geological structures in the formation of large landslide, a case study from Dumre Besei landslide, Lesser Himalaya Nepal

The Dumre Besi landslide is one of the largest and most problematic failures on the Mugling-Narayanghat Highway in central Nepal. Though it was triggered by the monsoon rain of 2003, geological structures and rock weathering have played a key role in its initiation and further aggravation. The slide is also controlled to some extent by the groundwater and rugged topography with high slope angles. The landslide zone comprises thinly laminated light grey siltstone with numerous crosscutting quartz veins, grey metasandstone (quartzite), bluish grey to white phyllite, black carbonaceous slate, and dolomite. A thrust fault passes through the centre of the landslide, creating a thick deposit of loose, weathered rock material, and the fault has developed a very thick shattered zone where weathering is very intense. Using field and laboratory analyses, the rocks in the landslide zone can be divided into five zones based on the severity of weathering: none, slight, moderate, severe, and complete. Laboratory analyses showed that the chemically weathered rocks are significantly rich in smectite and vermiculite. Out of these, smectite is the most critical one, as it swells when wet. The formation mechanism of the clay minerals was analysed by various techniques, including X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence, and thin-section analysis, and it was found that most of them were derived from weathering of rock. The clay minerals significantly reduced the rock strength and facilitated the extensive failure of Dumre Besi. The wide fault zone with deeply weathered and clay-rich debris is also responsible for the formation of debris flows in the monsoon season.ArticleLANDSLIDES. 10(1):1-13 (2013)journal articl

Lithostratigraphy and structures of the Siwaliks rocks in the southern part of Dang and its surrounding area, Southwestern Nepal

Late Cainozoic fluvial sedimentary sequences of the Siwalik Group is extensively accumulated in the southern frontal part of the Himalaya and well exposed along southern part of Dang and in all sides of the Deukahari Valley of west-central Nepal Himalaya.Lithostratigraphy of the succession consists of the Bankas Formation, Chor Khola Formation, Suria Khola Formation, Dobata Formation,and the Dhan Khola Formation in an ascending order.The Bankas Formation is represented by an interbedding of red-purple mudstones, shales, and fine-to very fine-grained sandstones. The Chor Khola Formation shows a gradual increase of sandstone grain size as well as thickness of beds. The sandstones are calcareous and rich in plant fossils. The mudstones are variegated in the lower part and gray-green in the upper part. The Surai Khola Formation is mainly represented by multi-storied, coarse-to very coarse-grained ‘salt and pepper’sandstones.The beds yield a great amount of petrified wood in the form of steams, branches, and roots. The Dobata Formation is predominated by mudstones with a minor amount of sandstones and conglomerates.The Dhan Khola Formation comprises compact and hard boulder-and pebble-bearing conglomerates with yellow mudstones in the lower part and not well cemented conglomerates with yellow mudstones in the upper part.The sandstones of the study area mostly belong to the litharenite and subordinately to the sub-litharenite.The rocks show coarsening-upward succession in general but many fining-upward fluvial successions on a scale from several to tens of meters is established in each lithological unit. The Siwalik rocks show a coarsening-upwards sequence, evidencing a continuous uplift of the Himalayas. However, the individual depositional units show a detailed lithostratigraphic study and geological mapping of the area show that the rocks of the present study area are lithostratigraphically similar to those of the Surai Khola area located in the east of the study area. The rocks distributed in the study area are highly deformed. The persistence of shortening between Indian Plate and Asian Plate involves their deformation. This deformation is expressed in the form of faults and folds which succeed one another in both space and time.The study area is subjected to more than one phase of deformational process.Series of faults such as the Bheri Thrust, Mali Khola Thrust, Babai Back Thrust, Tui Khola Back Thrust, and Rapti Back Thrust and also a number of folds as Baijapur Anticline, Bhaisahi Anticline, Khairi Khola Anticline, and Malai Khola Anticline, Agaiya Syncline, Satbariya Syncline, and Masot Khola Syncline delineate the study area. The pattern of thrusting here is related to the thin-skin tectonic model. The thrusts show the ramp-flat geometry and the thrusting is related to the piggy-back propagation pattern. Due to this thrusting the rocks here are repeated more than five times.The Dang Valley is located in a triangle zone bounded by the thrusts, which seems to be generated by retardation of faulting, thrusting and folding.ArticleJournal of the Faculty of Science Shinshu University 43: 1-42(2011)departmental bulletin pape

Continental weathering in the Early Triassic in Himalayan Tethys, central Nepal: Implications for abrupt environmental change on the northern margin of Gondwanaland

The geochemistry of Triassic mudstones in the Himalayan Tethys sequence, central Nepal, was studied with respect to changes in sedimentary facies, grain size, and source rocks. The Triassic sedimentary facies of mudstone and carbonates show deposition in offshore to hemiplegic environments. The rare earth element (REE) pattern of the Permian and Triassic mudstones suggests uniformity correlatable to average shale. The major element geochemistry of the Early Triassic Griesbachian-early Smithian mudstones indicates a sediment supply from strongly weathered sources with the chemical index of alteration (CIA) values of 76–81. However, the mudstones in the late Smithian show weakly weathered sources with CIA values of 68–74. The lower part of the Middle Triassic Anisian mudstones return to Early Triassic paleoweathering levels. There are no significant relationships among lithofacies, the grain size of the sediments, and CIA values. Thus, the abrupt change of the degree of paleoweathering in the Early Triassic, late Smithian time, suggests a dramatic decrease in continental weathering, which is related to a predominantly arid climate in the northern marginal area of Gondwana.ArticleJOURNAL OF ASIAN EARTH SCIENCES.79, Part A:288-301(2014)journal articl

Landslide susceptibility mapping using certainty factor, index of entropy and logistic regression models in GIS and their comparison at Mugling-Narayanghat road section in Nepal Himalaya

Landslide susceptibility maps are vital for disaster management and for planning development activities in the mountainous country like Nepal. In the present study, landslide susceptibility assessment of Mugling-Narayanghat road and its surrounding area is made using bivariate (certainty factor and index of entropy) and multivariate (logistic regression) models. At first, a landslide inventory map was prepared using earlier reports and aerial photographs as well as by carrying out field survey. As a result, 321 landslides were mapped and out of which 241 (75 %) were randomly selected for building landslide susceptibility models, while the remaining 80 (25 %) were used for validating the models. The effectiveness of landslide susceptibility assessment using GIS and statistics is based on appropriate selection of the factors which play a dominant role in slope stability. In this case study, the following landslide conditioning factors were evaluated: slope gradient; slope aspect; altitude; plan curvature; lithology; land use; distance from faults, rivers and roads; topographic wetness index; stream power index; and sediment transport index. These factors were prepared from topographic map, drainage map, road map, and the geological map. Finally, the validation of landslide susceptibility map was carried out using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. The ROC plot estimation results showed that the susceptibility map using index of entropy model with AUC value of 0.9016 has highest prediction accuracy of 90.16 %. Similarly, the susceptibility maps produced using logistic regression model and certainty factor model showed 86.29 and 83.57 % of prediction accuracy, respectively. Furthermore, the ROC plot showed that the success rate of all the three models performed more than 80 % accuracy (i.e. 89.15 % for IOE model, 89.10 % for LR model and 87.21 % for CF model). Hence, it is concluded that all the models employed in this study showed reasonably good accuracy in predicting the landslide susceptibility of Mugling-Narayanghat road section. These landslide susceptibility maps can be used for preliminary land use planning and hazard mitigation purpose.ArticleNATURAL HAZARDS. 65(1):135-165 (2013)journal articl

Landslide susceptibility mapping using certainty factor, index of entropy and logistic regression models in GIS and their comparison at Mugling-Narayanghat road section in Nepal Himalaya.

Landslide susceptibility maps are vital for disaster management and for planning development activities in the mountainous country like Nepal. In the present study, landslide susceptibility assessment of Mugling–Narayanghat road and its surrounding area is made using bivariate (certainty factor and index of entropy) and multivariate (logistic regression) models. At first, a landslide inventory map was prepared using earlier reports and aerial photographs as well as by carrying out field survey. As a result, 321 landslides were mapped and out of which 241 (75 %) were randomly selected for building landslide susceptibility models, while the remaining 80 (25 %) were used for validating the models. The effectiveness of landslide susceptibility assessment using GIS and statistics is based on appropriate selection of the factors which play a dominant role in slope stability. In this case study, the following landslide conditioning factors were evaluated: slope gradient; slope aspect; altitude; plan curvature; lithology; land use; distance from faults, rivers and roads; topographic wetness index; stream power index; and sediment transport index. These factors were prepared from topographic map, drainage map, road map, and the geological map. Finally, the validation of landslide susceptibility map was carried out using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. The ROC plot estimation results showed that the susceptibility map using index of entropy model with AUC value of 0.9016 has highest prediction accuracy of 90.16 %. Similarly, the susceptibility maps produced using logistic regression model and certainty factor model showed 86.29 and 83.57 % of prediction accuracy, respectively. Furthermore, the ROC plot showed that the success rate of all the three models performed more than 80 % accuracy (i.e. 89.15 % for IOE model, 89.10 % for LR model and 87.21 % for CF model). Hence, it is concluded that all the models employed in this study showed reasonably good accuracy in predicting the landslide susceptibility of Mugling–Narayanghat road section. These landslide susceptibility maps can be used for preliminary land use planning and hazard mitigation purpose

Superb Microvascular Imaging Ultrasound for Cervical Carotid Artery Stenosis for Prediction of the Development of Microembolic Signals on Transcranial Doppler during Carotid Exposure in Endarterectomy

Introduction: During exposure of the carotid arteries, embolism from the surgical site is recognized as a primary cause of neurological deficits or new cerebral ischemic lesions following carotid endarterectomy (CEA), and associations have been reported between histological neovascularization in the carotid plaque and both plaque vulnerability and the development of artery-to-artery embolism. Superb microvascular imaging (SMI) enables accurate visualization of neovessels in the carotid plaque without the use of intravenous contrast. This study aimed to determine whether preoperative SMI ultrasound for cervical carotid artery stenosis predicts the development of microembolic signals (MES) on transcranial Doppler (TCD) during exposure of the carotid arteries in CEA. Methods: Preoperative cervical carotid artery SMI ultrasound followed by CEA under TCD monitoring of MES in the ipsilateral middle cerebral artery was conducted in 70 patients previously diagnosed with internal carotid artery stenosis (defined as ≥70%). First, observers visually identified intraplaque microvascular flow (IMVF) signals as moving enhancements located near the surface of the carotid plaque within the plaque on SMI ultrasonograms. Next, regions of interest (ROI) were manually placed at the identified IMVF signals (or at arbitrary places within the plaque when no IMVF signals were identified within the carotid plaque) and the carotid lumen, and time-intensity curves of the IMVF signal and lumen ROI were generated. Ten heartbeat cycles of both time-intensity curves were segmented into each heartbeat cycle based on gated electrocardiogram findings and averaged with respect to the IMVF signal and lumen ROI. The difference between the maximum and minimum intensities (ID) was calculated based on the averaged IMVF signal (IDIMVF) and lumen (IDl) curves. Finally, the ratio of IDIMVF to IDl was calculated. Results: MES during exposure of the carotid arteries were detected in 17 patients (24%). The incidence of identification of IMVF signals was significantly greater in patients with MES (94%) than in those without (57%; p = 0.0067). The IDIMVF/IDl ratio was significantly greater in patients with MES (0.108 ± 0.120) than in those without (0.017 ± 0.042; p &#x3c; 0.0001). The specificity and positive predictive value for the IDIMVF/IDl ratio for prediction of the development of MES were significantly higher than those for the identification of IMVF signals. Logistic regression analysis revealed that only the IDIMVF/IDl ratio was significantly associated with the development of MES (95% CI 101.1–3,628.9; p = 0.0048). Conclusion: Preoperative cervical carotid artery SMI ultrasound predicts the development of MES on TCD during exposure of the carotid arteries in CEA

Application of frequency ratio, statistical index, and weights-of-evidence models and their comparison in landslide susceptibility mapping in Central Nepal Himalaya

The Mugling–Narayanghat road section falls within the Lesser Himalaya and Siwalik zones of Central Nepal Himalaya and is highly deformed by the presence of numerous faults and folds. Over the years, this road section and its surrounding area have experienced repeated landslide activities. For that reason, landslide susceptibility zonation is essential for roadside slope disaster management and for planning further development activities. The main goal of this study was to investigate the application of the frequency ratio (FR), statistical index (SI), and weights-of-evidence (WoE) approaches for landslide susceptibility mapping of this road section and its surrounding area. For this purpose, the input layers of the landslide conditioning factors were prepared in the first stage. A landslide inventory map was prepared using earlier reports, aerial photographs interpretation, and multiple field surveys. A total of 438 landslide locations were detected. Out these, 295 (67 %) landslides were randomly selected as training data for the modeling using FR, SI, and WoE models and the remaining 143 (33 %) were used for the validation purposes. The landslide conditioning factors considered for the study area are slope gradient, slope aspect, plan curvature, altitude, stream power index, topographic wetness index, lithology, land use, distance from faults, distance from rivers, and distance from highway. The results were validated using area under the curve (AUC) analysis. From the analysis, it is seen that the FR model with a success rate of 76.8 % and predictive accuracy of 75.4 % performs better than WoE (success rate, 75.6 %; predictive accuracy, 74.9 %) and SI (success rate, 75.5 %; predictive accuracy, 74.6 %) models. Overall, all the models showed almost similar results. The resultant susceptibility maps can be useful for general land use planning