Southern Willunga Fault Paleoseismic Investigation, South Australia

South Australia's Willunga Fault, ~40 km south of Adelaide, is the subject of a paleoseismic study. The dataset contains preliminary results from trench excavations, presenting evidence for 3-5 ground-rupturing earthquakes since the Middle to Late Pleistocene. The research was presented at the Australian & NZ Geomorphology Group Conference in September 2022.

Use Cases

• Modeling seismic hazard for proximal communities based on evidence of 3-5 past earthquakes.
• Estimating fault slip rates and recurrence intervals based on single event displacements of 0.5–1.7 m.
• Relating recent earthquake history to longer-term landscape evolution evidenced by over 200 m of tectonic uplift in the last 5 million years.
• Constraining the spatiotemporal distribution of uplift among faults in the Mt Lofty Ranges.

Strengths

• Evidence quantifies 3-5 ground-rupturing earthquakes on a specific fault.
• Provides measured single-event displacement ranges of 0.5–1.7 meters.
• Links recent seismic activity to a documented longer-term uplift of over 200 m within 5 million years.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data is presented as a PDF abstract; underlying raw trench data and sample dates are not directly accessible.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Paleoseismic investigation via trench excavation across the fault to examine fault planes and sedimentary strata.

Time Range

Middle to Late Pleistocene to present

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-16 09:58:12.129378; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Southern Willunga Fault, ~40 km south of Adelaide, South Australia