Hydrogeological Properties at the Toe of the Nankai Accretionary Prism,
using Borehole Geophysical and Petrophysical Data within Hole C0024A,
Expedition 358 of IODP--NanTroSEIZE Project.
Abstract
The Nankai Trough is a locus of slow slips, low frequency, and
large-magnitude classical earthquakes. It is assumed that high pore
pressure contributes substantially to earthquake dynamics. Hence, a full
understanding of the hydraulic regime of the Nankai accretionary prism
is needed to understand this diversity of behavior.We contribute to
understanding the full hydraulic regime within the Nankai accretionary
prism by innovatively integrating the drilling and logging data of the
NanTroSEIZE project. We focus on the toe of the Nankai accretionary
prism by studying data from hole C0024A drilled during IODP expedition
358. This drilled hole intersected the Nankai décollement at 813 mbsf,
about 3 km from the trench. Pore pressure was first estimated using
Eaton’s method on both drilling and sonic velocity data. Both results
show that pore pressure follows hydrostatics until the top of the
hemipelagites, with local pore pressure rising up to 38% above
hydrostatic especially crossing the décollement. Downhole Annular
Pressure was also monitored during drilling, and a careful reanalysis of
its variation shows the occurrence and the locus of fluid flow between
the formation and the borehole. Primarily, there are two identified
fluid flow anomalies intervals: (1) at the shallow depths <100
mbsf with loose coarse sediments, which could be related to erosional
unloading, landslide, slope instability. (2) Below the décollement
(<813 mbsf) at the two asymmetric damage zones. The damage
zones at the footwalls of the major faults are predominantly permeable
with significant porosity and permeability values with orders of
magnitude between ∼10−16 to 10−17 m2 as quantitatively estimated using
the Hvorslev equation for a fully penetrating well in a confined
aquifer. Our results show that the formation fluids are getting
significantly over-pressurized only a few hundred meters from the toe of
the décollement. The décollement is already impermeable across the
fault, and the fluid flow is channelized along the damage zones. The
impermeable décollement acts as a hydraulic barrier inhibiting fluid
flow upward, keeping high pore pressure at the footwall and increasing
the structural weakness of the lithologies. It’s therefore probable that
high pressure is also expected further down in the locus of tremors and
slow slip events.