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Regional variations in neotectonic fault behaviour in Australia, as they pertain to the seismic hazard in capital cities

Created 17/10/2025

Updated 17/10/2025

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Four of Australia's largest five population centres are topographically constrained by prominent escarpments (i.e. Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide). These escarpments are underlain by faults or fault complexes capable of hosting damaging earthquakes. Paleoseismological investigations over the last decade indicate that the seismogenic character (e.g. recurrence and magnitude) of these structures varies markedly. Uplift rates on range bounding faults in the Mount Lofty Ranges suggest average recurrence times on individual faults for Mmax earthquakes (MW 7.1-7.4) in the order of 10-20 ka. A high density of faults with demonstrated Late Quaternary surface rupture occurring proximally to Adelaide suggests recurrence times for damaging ground shaking at a given location from earthquakes on these faults in the hundreds to low thousands of years. Uplift rates on faults proximal to Melbourne (and the Latrobe Valley, where much of Melbourne's power is generated) in some cases exceed those of the Mount Lofty Ranges. However, a lower relative density of seismogenic faults proximal to the conurbation of Melbourne is suggestive of a lesser hazard than for Adelaide. In contrast to Melbourne and Adelaide, paleoseismological investigations on the Darling Fault near Perth, and the Lapstone Structural Complex near Sydney, indicate average recurrence for Mmax events in the hundreds of thousands to millions of years. Of course, distal larger events and proximal sub-Mmax events have been demonstrated to be damaging in these areas (e.g. 1968 Ms6.8 Meckering, 1989 ML5.6 Newcastle). The same is true for Adelaide and Melbourne (e.g. 1954 ML5.4 Adelaide, 2012 ML 5.4 Moe). Further research is required to demonstrate that earthquakes of sub-morphogenic and morphogenic magnitude might be modelled on the same Guttenberg-Richter distribution curve.

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Field Value
Title Regional variations in neotectonic fault behaviour in Australia, as they pertain to the seismic hazard in capital cities
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/cd7ac5f9-9909-4c62-9bbe-469485158b7b
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 22/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage Australia
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Regional variations in neotectonic fault behaviour in Australia, as they pertain to the seismic hazard in capital cities". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/regional-variations-in-neotectonic-fault-behaviour-in-australia-as-they-pertain-to-the-seismic-