Geography of Indonesia is responsible for the creation of the Sunda Trench, and mountain ranges across Sumatra, Java, and the Lesser Sunda Islands. Many great earthquakes occurred in the vicinity of the fault, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Mount Merapi, located in the Java portion of the megathrust, is the most active volcano in Indonesia and is designated as one of world's Decade Volcanoes due to the hazard it poses to the surrounding populated areas. The northern part of Sulawesi and Maluku Islands lie on the convergence of Sunda Plate and Molucca Sea Plate, making it an active tectonic region with
Japan Trench earthquakes within the deeper part of the plate interface zone. No earthquakes have been observed or reported from the shallow aseismic zone of the north Japan Trench. Regions of rough ocean bottom subduction are correlated with large normal faulting earthquakes within the outer-rise region, along with larger tsunami earthquakes occurring at the shallow region of the plate interface (megathrust events) . In 1980, lipids samples were taken via sediment cores located on both the landward and distal sides of the Japan Trench during six sections of the Deep Sea Drilling Project's transect. They were analyzed using gas chromatography and computerized-gas