Citation

Berryman KR, Cochran UA, Clark KJ, Biasi GP, Langridge RM, Villamor P. Science 2012; 336(6089): 1690-1693.

Affiliation

GNS Science, Post Office Box 30-368, Lower Hutt 5040, New Zealand. k.berryman@gns.cri.nz

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, American Association for the Advancement of Science)

DOI

10.1126/science.1218959

PMID

22745426

Abstract

The scarcity of long geological records of major earthquakes, on different types of faults, makes testing hypotheses of regular versus random or clustered earthquake recurrence behavior difficult. We provide a fault-proximal major earthquake record spanning 8000 years on the strike-slip Alpine Fault in New Zealand. Cyclic stratigraphy at Hokuri Creek suggests that the fault ruptured to the surface 24 times, and event ages yield a 0.33 coefficient of variation in recurrence interval. We associate this near-regular earthquake recurrence with a geometrically simple strike-slip fault, with high slip rate, accommodating a high proportion of plate boundary motion that works in isolation from other faults. We propose that it is valid to apply time-dependent earthquake recurrence models for seismic hazard estimation to similar faults worldwide.

Language: en