PRIMARILY STUDY ON FEATURES OF SURFACE RUPTURES INDUCED BY THE 2016 MW7.8 KARKOURA EARTHQUAKE,NEW ZEALAND |
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| Authors: | HAN Zhu-jun Nicola Litchfield RAN Hong-liu YUAN Ren-mao GUO Peng Robert M Langridge Russ J Van Dissen |
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| Affiliation: | 1.Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration, Beijing 100029, China;2.Institute of Geological and Nuclear Science, Lower Hutt 5010, New Zealand |
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| Abstract: | The surface ruptures produced by the 2016 MW7.8 Karkoura earthquake, New Zealand are distributed in a belt with~170km long and~35km wide, trending generally in the NE-SW direction. There are at least 12 faults on which meter-scale displacements are identified and they were formed across two distinct seismotectonic provinces with fundamental different characteristics(Hamling et al., 2017; Litchfield et al., 2017). Although the trending directions of the seismic surface ruptures vary greatly at different locations, the ruptured faults can be generally divided into two groups with the NE to NEE direction and the NNW to N direction, respectively. The faults in the NNW-near NS direction are nearly parallel with 40~50km apart and featured by reverse movement with the maximum displacement of 5~6m. The faults in the NE-NNE direction, with the maximum of 25~30km apart are not continuous and featured by the dextral strike slip with the largest displacement of 10~12m. Even if some faults along the NE-NEE direction are end to end connected, their strikes differ by about 30°. The combination styles of the strike-slip fault surface ruptures along the NE-NEE direction can be merged into 3 categories, including en-echelon, bifurcation and parallel patterns. The scales of the fault surface ruptures with the same structural style could be obviously different in different areas, which results in significant changes in the widths of deformation zone, from tens of meters to hundreds of meters. En-echelon distributed surface rupture(section)can appear as a combination belt of meter-scale to dozens of meter-scale shear fracture with bulge and compressional shear fractures, and also can be characterized by the combination of the left-step en-echelon tensile shear fractures with a length of more than one hundred meters. The step-overs between surface rupture sections are clearly different in sizes, which can be dozens of meters, hundreds of meters to several kilometers. The spacing between parallel surface ruptures can be several meters, dozens of meters to several kilometers. Besides, as one of the prominent characteristics, the seismic surface ruptures caused by the Karkoura earthquake broke through the known distribution pattern of active faults. The surface ruptures can occur either on the previously thought inactive or unmapped faults, or break through the distribution range of previously realized active faults in the striking or lateral direction. The basic features about the distribution and widths of the surface ruptures induced by the 2016 MW7.8 Karkoura earthquake, New Zealand presented in this paper might be helpful for understanding some seismic problems such as complex corresponding relationship between the active faults and the deep seismogenic structure, and the necessary measurements for engineering crossing active faults. |
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| Keywords: | the 2016 MW7 8 Karkoura earthquake fault surface rupture seismotectonics safety distance to the active fault |
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