6 April 2012

Friday fold: Japanese garden

Posted by Callan Bentley

Richard Littauer, a MSc student in Computational Linguistics at the University of Saarland (on Twitter at @richlitt) sent me today’s Friday fold. It comes from a garden at Nijo Castle in Kyoto, Japan.

Definitely some wavy layers there. It’s a lovely specimen that would add gravitas to anyone’s garden. Not sure what it is – are these sedimentary strata or volcanic units? There’s plenty of sedimentary rock in Japan in addition to the copious extrusions from the volcanic arc complex. This looks too thinly bedded to be lava flows, but it could be ash fall deposits, I guess. But if I were a betting man, I’d guess it’s seafloor sediments from the accretionary wedge complex that developed in the subduction zone, improved in their overall aspect by the imposition of an open fold.