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  • Title: Major earthquakes occur regularly on an isolated plate boundary fault.
    Author: Berryman KR, Cochran UA, Clark KJ, Biasi GP, Langridge RM, Villamor P.
    Journal: Science; 2012 Jun 29; 336(6089):1690-3. PubMed ID: 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.
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