Abstract
The seismic refraction survey has been widely used in the field of earth science studies to understand the crustal structure as well as the engineering purposes. This review briefly summarizes the purpose, the technical specification and the achievement of land seismic refraction surveys in Japan applied to the earth science studies. The crustal structure survey in Japan started in 1950's and has been successfully elucidated the crustal structure beneath the Japan Islands. Although the technical advances of both data acquisition and data analysis resulted the shift of survey method to seismic reflection survey since 1990's, the refraction method is still adopted as a large scale survey method. The successful application includes the large crustal-scale survey to understand the formation and development of the island arc crust, and the focused surveys to elucidate the basement structure under urban areas or to understand the earthquake activity and the crustal deformation of the area of interest. The method has also been applied to the active volcanic areas.
