Outline of collaborative research

The International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP), with UNESCO as a member, supports projects addressing globally significant issues in geoscience, geoengineering, natural resources, and environments, which must be proposed by multiple countries. A Ritsumeikan professor and his students led an ICDP project and successfully drilled into an earthquake generation zone. This achievement couldn’t be made anywhere else in the world than at the South African gold mines.
https://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/research/radiant/eng/connect/story1.html

This was the fourth project led by Japan out of approximately 50 ICDP projects. After the COVID-19 hiatus, the Ritsumeikan University Program to Promote International Collaboration (FY2023 and 2024) resumed and advanced the project into a new phase.

The project team renewed the research collaboration agreements with the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa (S.A.) and resumed exchanging researchers and students. In addition to the researchers from Wits, those from Princeton University, and University of the Free State, S.A. worked with Ritsumeikan to reinstall a water sampling system of US NSF in the boreholes drilled toward the seismogenic zone.

Thanks to the collaborative efforts, the project team with PI from Tohoku University and a co-proponent from Ritsumeikan University was able to submit a preproposal and a workshop proposal to the ICDP in January 2024 and January 2025, respectively.    The approved project, titled "Probing the Heart of an Earthquake and Life in the Deep Subsurface: PROTEA," can be found at:
https://www.icdp-online.org/projects/by-continent/africa/protea-south-africa/
https://www.icdp-online.org/projects/by-continent/africa/dseis-south-africa/press-releases/

Papers, etc.

Peer-reviewed papers

• A Trial Evaluation of Rock Core DCDA Absolute Shear Stress Measurement for Routine Quantitative Mining Hazard Assessment in Deep Underground High Stress Mines, Materials Transactions. Jul 2024. DOI: 10.2320/matertrans.MT-Z2024004

Symposia, seminars, etc.

International seminars

• DSeis-PROTEA meeting at University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in January 2024; 73 people from 9 countries attended/registered, including Dr. Kunkel, ICDP; 43 S.A.; 15 Jpn.; 7 Ind.; 2 USA and Germany; 1 Canada, China, Poland, Taiwan).
• DSeis-PROTEA meeting at the Ritsumeikan University Tokyo Campus in June 2024; 36 participants from five countries, including the Dr. Kunkel, ICDP (27 Jpn; 4 S.A.; 3 Germany; 1 USA Poland). A courtesy visit to the S.A. Embassy in Tokyo on the following day.