Last week trenching the northern Alpine Fault at Blue Grey River w/ @stef-eq-geology.bsky.social and @jameslagreca.bsky.social and friends looking for paleoearthquakes. Many sandfly enemies too
“Super-shear rupture earthquake” sounds dramatic, but it’s just describing relative speed, i.e. opposite to the rupture having a sub-shear wave velocity. Far from the epicentre, only very low frequency energy remains, a potential issue for structures with a matching natural period, as seen last week
A M7.7 followed ~11 mins later by a M6.4 aftershock - still a strong earthquake and likely damaging in itself - in Myanmar/ Burma about 40 mins ago. It took ~12 minutes for the associated waveforms to arrive at our recorders in the @earthquakes-au.bsky.social network in southeast Australia.
About to fly home after more than a month away attending both the AEES and GSNZ conferences and finalising PhD fieldwork on the Alpine Fault, Aotearoa. I owe a lot to @aotearoa-unzpd.bsky.social for supervising and mentoring me, especially over the last month :)
A M7.5 (prelim.) - with a current depth estimate of ~50 km - near Vanuatu not long ago, as detected by all the sites in our seismic network in southeast Australia.
The fun side of being in the field though is swimming pools, pizza, hot springs, sandflies (not), rain, and other. Hard work, good times
New trench excavated across the Alpine Fault at Blue Grey River. Definitely reverse dominant at this site. Thanks to @jameslagreca.bsky.social and Liv for their hard work. We were lucky with weather but eventually chased off by torrential rain.
Last weekend we had an amazing campaign on the Alpine-Wairau (Big) Bend of the Alpine Fault, Glenroy River. Thanks to @jameslagreca.bsky.social Liv & Alex for doing the mahi. We located THE one and only Alpine Fault outcrop in the valley and also sampled the Glenroy rock avalanche. Still buzzing!
