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- March 6, 2025
The 2024 EPS Young Researcher Award

The 2024 EPS Young Researcher award is granted to Dr. Yutaro Okada, as the first author of the following paper.
- Development of a detection method for short-term slow slip events using GNSS data and its application to the Nankai subduction zone, Yutaro Okada, Takuya Nishimura, Takao Tabei, Takeshi Matsushima and Hitoshi Hirose, Earth, Planets and Space 2022 74:18, Published on: 24 January 2022
This paper presents a new methodology for detecting short-term slow slip events (S-SSEs) along the deep belt of the Nankai subduction zone, a region where slow earthquakes have repeatedly occurred. Using global navigation satellite system data from 1997 to 2020, the authors identify S-SSEs by analyzing spatial-temporal correlations between observed signals and predicted slips along the plate boundary fault. After detecting each S-SSE, both the slip amount and event duration were estimated. A total of 284 S-SSEs were identified over the 23-year period, including newly detected events accompanied by very low-frequency earthquakes and repeating earthquakes offshore Kyushu Island. The estimated cumulative slip, event duration, and average slip rate reveal a heterogeneous distribution along the deep slow earthquake belt. Notably, the average slip rate in western Shikoku was approximately twice that in eastern Shikoku and Kyushu. These comprehensive detections of S-SSEs will contribute significantly to our understanding of the mechanisms and statistical characteristics of slow earthquakes. The first author, Dr. Yutaro Okada, made the primary contributions to this study, and is hereby awarded the 2024 Young Researcher Award.