GEOCHEMICAL JOURNAL
Online ISSN : 1880-5973
Print ISSN : 0016-7002
ISSN-L : 0016-7002
Volume 60, Issue 1
Displaying 1-1 of 1 articles from this issue
NOTE
  • Yasumasa Sakai, Akira Ijiri, Yusuke Miyajima, Hideyoshi Yoshioka
    Article type: NOTE
    2026Volume 60Issue 1 Pages 1-6
    Published: 2026
    Released on J-STAGE: February 28, 2026
    Advance online publication: January 22, 2026
    JOURNAL OPEN ACCESS FULL-TEXT HTML
    Supplementary material

    We analyzed the chemical composition of porewater extracted from sediment samples collected at shallow methane hydrate fields off Joetsu, in the Japan Sea, during Expedition CK22-03 of the drilling vessel Chikyu in 2022. At Joetsu Knoll, where massive methane hydrates were observed, the Cl concentrations of porewaters were high (879–1282 mM) at the depth interval between 12 and 60 meters below the seafloor and roughly twice the concentration in the sediment at the top of the core (545 mM). These elevated Cl concentrations were observed at greater depths and were higher than those reported in previous studies of this field. We analyzed the δD and δ18O of the porewaters and quantitatively confirmed that the hypersaline waters represent residual waters accumulated by rapid formation of methane hydrates. Based on Cl concentration, amount of methane incorporated into hydrates in the sediments was estimated to be 51–81 m3/m3 at standard temperature and pressure.

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