The special Kaikoura Earthquake issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America has been published.
The publication is a landmark collection of research papers on the geoscience of the November 2016 magnitude 7.8 Kaikoura earthquake. It contains 21 articles that have been written by expert teams over the past 18 months, which are joined by at least 60 others already published on the earthquake and its impacts.
One paper involved an analysis of all of the surface faulting led by GNS Science earthquake geologist Nicola Litchfield. It showed about two-thirds of the earthquake’s energy was released on the 24 surface-rupturing faults, with the remaining third occurring on the underlying Hikurangi subduction interface. This is the boundary where the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates meet.
Another paper, led by GNS Science engineering geologist Chris Massey, characterises a large number of landslides associated with the earthquake. It identifies the distance from fault rupture as a better predictor of landslide density than maps of peak ground acceleration or peak ground velocity. The study also found that coastal slopes are more vulnerable to landslides than inland slopes in similar materials, likely because of many decades of being exposed to energetic coastal processes.
Other topics covered in detail include satellite detection of land movement, geotechnical engineering, seismic energy radiation patterns, liquefaction, tsunami modelling and inundation, social science, and ground movement and shaking intensities in Wellington.
GNS Science scientist Kelvin Berryman said the publication is a milestone in the documentation of the processes and impacts of the Kaikōura earthquake. It would feed into planning and mitigation of large earthquake impacts globally, he added.
The Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America has its origins in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and is regarded as one of the top earthquake science journals in the world.
