Earthquake sources of the Australian plate margin: Revised models for the 2018 national tsunami and earthquake hazard assessments  

Authors / CoAuthors

Griffin, J. | Davies, G.

Abstract

Located within an intraplate setting, continental Australia has a relatively low rate of seismicity compared with its surrounding plate boundary regions. However, the plate boundaries to the north and east of Australia host significant earthquakes that can impact Australia. Large plate boundary earthquakes have historically generated damaging ground shaking in northern Australia, including Darwin. Large submarine earthquakes have historically generated tsunami impacting the coastline of Australia. Previous studies of tsunami hazard in Australia have focussed on the threat from major subduction zones such as the Sunda and Kermadec Arcs. Although still subject to uncertainty, our understanding of the location, geometry and convergence rates of these subduction zones is established by global tectonic models. Conversely, actively deforming regions in central and eastern Indonesia, the Papua New Guinea region and the Macquarie Ridge region are less well defined, with deformation being more continuous and less easily partitioned onto discrete known structures. A number of recently published geological, geodetic and seismological studies are providing new insights into present-day active tectonics of these regions, providing a basis for updating earthquake source models for earthquake and tsunami hazard assessment. This report details updates to earthquake source models in active tectonic regions along the Australian plate boundary, with a primary focus on regions to the north of Australia, and a subsidiary focus on the Puyesgur-Macquarie Ridge-Hjort plate boundary south of New Zealand. The motivation for updating these source models is threefold: 1. To update regional source models for the 2018 revision of the Australian probabilistic tsunami hazard assessment (PTHA18); 2. To update regional source models for the 2018 revision of the Australian national seismic hazard assessment (NSHA18); and 3. To provide an updated database of earthquake source models for tsunami hazard assessment in central and eastern Indonesia, in support of work funded through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) DMInnovation program.

Product Type

document

eCat Id

123048

Contact for the resource

Digital Object Identifier

http://dx.doi.org/10.11636/Record.2018.031

Keywords

( Discipline )

• earthquake hazard

( Discipline )

• tsunami hazard

( Product )

• Published_External

• HVC_144647

Publication Date

2018-10-10T04:08:24

Creation Date

2018-09-18T00:00:00

Security Constraints

Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem    

Classification - unclassified

Legal Constraints

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence    

Access - license

Use - license

Status

Purpose

This Record is the fifth in the series of Records and datasets that support the release of the NSHA18 (overarching overview provided at ecat 123020)

Maintenance Information

asNeeded

Topic Category

geoscientificInformation

Series Information

Record 2018/031

Lineage

Not supplied

Parent Information

Extents

[-44, -9, 112, 154]

Reference System

Spatial Resolution

Service Information

Associations

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Download the Record (pdf)  

Related product: Earthquake sources of the Australian plate margin: data for the 2018 national tsunami and earthquake hazard assessments  

Related product: NSHA18 catalogue  

The 2018 National Seismic Hazard Assessment for Australia  

Source Information