Megaquake could hit central

New Zealand
www.stuff.co.nz
19/05/15
Scientists finally have proof that central New Zealand could be ticking
down to a highly damaging "megathrust" earthquake.
Earlier research has suggested the seabed between the Wairarapa and
Marlborough is capable of generating magnitude 7-plus quakes.
Now researchers have found solid geological evidence that an area off the
coast of Wairarapa and fringing Cook Strait causes "megathrust" quakes
and tsunami similar to, but probably smaller than, the devastating
magnitude 9.0 March 2011 event in Japan.

Mark Cornell
The study area was salt marsh flats on the edge of Big Lagoon near
Blenheim
> Stuff will host a live chat at 12 noon with GNS Science's Dr Kate
Clark, the lead author of this study.
The work, out Tuesday morning, highlights the active threat the southern
Hikurangi margin - where the Pacific Plate is being dragged down below
the Australian Plate - poses to life and livelihood from Hawke's Bay south
to the Wairarapa, Wellington and Marlborough.
The Alpine Fault, which extends further south from that plate boundary, is
also a hazardous feature that will generate a magnitude 8 quake when it
ruptures, possibly some time in the next 50 to 100 years.

GNS SCIENCE
To look for evidence of past earthquakes on the margin, the researchers
performed a painstaking examination of the geologic layers contained
within a salt marsh at Big Lagoon in the southeastern Wairau River valley
on South Island.
The scientists, from GNS Science, the University of Texas and Geomarine
Research, have calculated that in the past 1000 years two subduction
quakes of at least magnitude 7 occurred one between about 880 to 800
years ago and the other between 520 and 470 years ago.

"This is the first evidence that the southern Hikurangi margin ruptures in
large (7-7.9) to great (8+) earthquakes, and the relatively short time
interval between the two events has significant implications for seismic
hazard in New Zealand," they said in Tuesday's Bulletin of the
Seismological Society of America.

Philip Carthew
A map showing the area
when the Australian and
Pacific tectonic plates
collide. Researchers warn
a 'megaquake' of
magnitude 8 or more
could occur in this area.

They cited an earlier paper that said for a magnitude 8.9 Hikurangi
subduction quake, losses in the Wellington region alone were estimated to
be about $13 billion, with about 3550 deaths and 7000 injuries.
Their findings would allow better modelling of the impacts and help
communities prepare to cope with such an event, they said.
The Hikurangi margin, which runs from east of East Cape to offshore of the
Marlborough coast, is one of the few subduction zones around the Pacific
that has not generated a "great", above magnitude 8, quake in historic
times.

Kate Clark, GNS Science

Jamie Howarth, William Ries and Delia Strong, of GNS Science, using a
piston corer to recover sediment cores from salt marsh at Big Lagoon,
Blenheim, to determine the dates of the last megathrust earthquake off
the Wairarapa coast.
Data shows that in the southern Hikurangi margin the Australian and
Pacific plates are locked and accumulating strain where they meet, about
25km beneath Wellington and Blenheim.
Previous research suggests this locked patch between Cook Strait and
Cape Turnagain could generate a quake of between 8.5 and 8.7
magnitude.
In their search for subduction-quake evidence, the researchers used a salt
marsh on the edge of Big Lagoon near Blenheim to recover sediment that
could be aged by radiocarbon dating.
They collected 48 sediment cores, from 0.5m to 2.2m deep. Analysis and
dating of the buried soils in the cores showed there had been two
occasions of sudden subsidence of the lagoon in the past 1000 years,
indicative of two large quakes.
The older event was accompanied by a tsunami at least 3.3m high that
swept more than 360m inland.
There was no evidence of a tsunami hitting Big Lagoon in the more recent
quake, although there were tsunami deposits around Cook Strait, at Abel
Tasman and on Kapiti Island about the same time as that event,
researchers said.
Lead researcher Dr Kate Clark, of GNS Science, said the findings did not
greatly change the actual level of risk to people in central New Zealand.
The National Seismic Hazard Model used a recurrence interval of 550 to
1000 years for a magnitude 8.1-8.4 quake but the researchers had found
an actual interval of about 350 years between the two quakes.
While that was different, it was not an irreconcilable difference, given the
average was only based on two events.
- Stuff