TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2012//
TI  - Major earthquakes occur regularly on an isolated plate boundary fault
JO  - Science
A1  - Berryman, Kelvin R.
A1  - Cochran, Ursula A.
A1  - Clark, Kate J.
A1  - Biasi, Glenn P.
A1  - Langridge, Robert M.
A1  - Villamor, Pilar
SP  - 1690
EP  - 1693
VL  - 336
IS  - 6089
N2  - 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>
LA  - en
SN  - 0036-8075
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1218959
ID  - ref1
ER  -