Paleoseismic Evidence for 3-5 Earthquakes on the Southern Willunga Fault, South Australia

Preliminary results from a paleoseismic investigation of the southern Willunga Fault, approximately 40 km south of Adelaide. The study presents evidence for 3-5 ground-rupturing earthquakes since the Middle to Late Pleistocene, with single event displacements of 0.5–1.7 meters. This abstract was presented at the Australian & NZ Geomorphology Group Conference in September 2022.

Use Cases

• Modeling seismic hazard for communities near Adelaide based on estimated fault displacement and recurrence.
• Correlating recent fault activity with long-term landscape evolution described in the abstract.
• Calibrating regional tectonic uplift rates using evidence from the Myponga and Meadows basins.

Strengths

• Provides quantitative displacement estimates of 0.5–1.7 meters per earthquake event.
• Identifies a specific fault (southern Willunga Fault) with a known location (~40 km south of Adelaide).
• Links recent seismic activity to a documented longer-term uplift history of over 200 meters in the last 5 million years.

Limitations

• Dataset consists of a conference abstract in PDF format; the underlying trench data and sample dates are not provided.
• Row count and column-level documentation are absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Freshness should be verified; the record was last updated 2026-06-05, but the core data is from a 2022 conference.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network via data.gov.au

Collection Method

Paleoseismic trench investigation across the fault to examine relationships between fault planes and sedimentary strata.

Time Range

Middle to Late Pleistocene to present

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-05 07:38:58.367390; freshness should be verified

Geography

Southern Willunga Fault, Mt Lofty Ranges, South Australia (~40 km south of Adelaide)