Ocean-Bottom Strong-Motion Observations in the Nankai Trough by the DONET Real-Time Monitoring System

The deployment of real-time permanent ocean-bottom seismic and tsunami observatories is significant for disaster mitigation and prevention during the occurrence of large subduction earthquakes near trough areas. On April 1, 2016, a moderate-sized suboceanic earthquake occurred beneath Dense Oceanfloor Network System for Earthquakes and Tsunamis (DONET) stations that were recently deployed in deep ocean-bottom areas near the Nankai Trough in southwest Japan. P-waves arrived at the ocean-bottom station within 4 s of the origin time, which was 6 and 13 s earlier than the arrival of P- and S-waves at a land station in the coastal area, respectively; this implies earlier detection of strong motion than at land stations. However, the waveforms are amplified by sediment layers and even contaminated with acceleration offsets at some stations, which would lead to overestimations during source investigations. Such amplification and offset did not occur at a borehole station connected to DONET. The amplifications caused by the sediment layers and the offset were found to have a considerable spatial variation, not only between the DONET stations and land and borehole stations but also among the DONET stations, implying that the amplitude evaluation could be unstable. Therefore, procedures for correcting or suppressing the amplification and offset problem are required for conducting waveform analyses, such as magnitude estimations and source modeling, during large subduction earthquakes.