@article{ref1,
title="Major earthquakes occur regularly on an isolated plate boundary fault",
journal="Science",
year="2012",
author="Berryman, Kelvin R. and Cochran, Ursula A. and Clark, Kate J. and Biasi, Glenn P. and Langridge, Robert M. and Villamor, Pilar",
volume="336",
number="6089",
pages="1690-1693",
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.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0036-8075",
doi="10.1126/science.1218959",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1218959"
}