Paleoseismic Evidence for Southern Willunga Fault Earthquakes

South Australia's southern Willunga Fault preserves evidence for 3-5 ground-rupturing earthquakes since the Middle to Late Pleistocene. The dataset presents preliminary results from a paleoseismic investigation using trench excavations across the fault near Adelaide. It aims to constrain earthquake timing and displacement to assess present-day seismic hazard.

Use Cases

• Analyze single event displacements of 0.5 – 1.7 m to model fault slip rates and seismic moment release.
• Correlate the timing of 3-5 ground-rupturing earthquakes with uplifted Pliocene marine sediment basins for tectonic history.
• Use trench-examined relationships between fault planes and sedimentary strata for seismic hazard assessment near Adelaide.

Strengths

• Provides direct paleoseismic evidence for 3-5 historical earthquakes on a specific fault.
• Investigates a fault ~40 km south of Adelaide, relevant to proximal community and infrastructure hazard.
• Links recent earthquake history to a documented longer-term uplift of over 200 m within the last 5 million years.

Limitations

• Data is preliminary; final age constraints from sample dating are pending.
• The spatiotemporal distribution of uplift across the fault system is described as poorly understood.
• Dataset is a conference abstract in PDF format, not a structured tabular dataset.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

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

Time Range

Middle to Late Pleistocene to present.

Freshness

null

Geography

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