Why Japan and Italy have the severest geohazards?

Abstract

Why Japan and Italy have the severest geohazards? For many years, various researchers have tried to give various answers to this question. This paper presents a new hypothesis to answer the question. The hypothesis is that a thin spherical methane gas CH4 layer exists between the crust and mantle. This gas-sphere layer separates and protects the cold crust rocks and the hot mantle and core materials. The methane gas is produced by the mantle and core materials and is stored by the spherical trap of the compressive lower crust rock. Because of various deep crustal faults in some special regions including Japan and Italy, the gas mass of extremely high density and pressure can escape its deep traps and flow to the shallow crustal ground, which causes the severest geohazards including volcano, earthquake, tsunami, land subsidence, ground faulting, and landslide in these regions. The methane gas can provide both the mechanical energy and the chemical energy to make the geohazards. In particular, this paper examines the gas cause of active volcanos that are present in the ground surface and upper crustal rocks. The volcano cone-shaped mountain is used to estimate the gas chamber volume below the cone-shaped mountain because the volcano cone rocks come from the rocks originally infilling the gas chamber. The chemical reaction of the methane gas with the crustal rocks surrounding the chamber produces new gases, lavas and ashes.