More than 35 fairly characteristic large earthquakes revealed on the Hope fault, New Zealand, from LiDAR data
Abstract
We use high-resolution LiDAR topographic data to recover the large earthquake history of one of the largest seismogenic faults in New Zealand, the Hope fault, that has not broken since at least 1840 and thus poses a critical seismic hazard to populated cities such as Kaikoura and Christchurch. The data cover a 30 km long section of the Eastern Hope fault. Its analysis provides the longest and most continuous slip record ever obtained on a seismogenic fault. The PDF statistical analysis of the 253 lateral cumulative offsets that we measured reveals that the alluvial morphology has well recorded the 36-40 most recent large earthquakes on the fault, and fairly well recorded many more events. These earthquakes were fairly characteristic and produced 3-4 m of lateral slip at the surface (in the zone of study), with likely minimum magnitudes of 7.0-7.4. Our work thus provides key information to anticipate the size of the forthcoming large earthquakes on the Hope fault.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFM.T21H..04M
- Keywords:
-
- 7221 SEISMOLOGY / Paleoseismology