K. Satake T. Kamataki H. Nasu M. Shishikura B.F. Atwater B. P. Horton H.M. Kelsey T. Nagumo M. Yamaguchi Y. Sawai 2004 In eastern Hokkaido, 60 to 80 kilometers above a subducting oceanic plate, tidal mudflats changed into freshwater forests during the first decades after a 17th-century tsunami. The mudflats gradually rose by a meter, as judged from fossil diatom assemblages. Both the tsunami and the ensuing uplift exceeded any in the region's 200 years of written history, and both resulted from a shallow plate-boundary earthquake of unusually large size along the Kuril subduction zone. This earthquake probably induced more creep farther down the plate boundary than did any of the region's historical events. application/pdf 10.1126/science.1104895 en Transient uplift after a 17th-century earthquake along the kuril subduction zone article