Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

Earthquake Nias-Simeuline – Deformation and Slip along the Sunda Megathrust 2015

Seismic rupture produced spectacular tectonic deformation above a strip of the Sunda Megathrust about 400 km long offshore from northern Sumatra, March 2005. Belts of uplift up to 3 m high that are belt-parallel were revealed from coral microatolls and GPS stations. More than 11 m of fault slip beneath the islands and a pronounced lessening of slip trenchward is reflected by surface deformation. The northwestern edge of the 2005 rupture is separated by a saddle in megathrust slip from the great 2004 Sumatra-Andaman rupture. The southern edge abuts a section, that is predominantly aseismic, of the megathrust near the equator.

Sources & Further reading

1. Briggs, R. W., K. Sieh, J. M. Aron, D. Natawidjaja, J. Galetzka, B. Suwargadi, Y.-j. Hsu, M. Simons, N. Hananto, I. Suprihanto, D. Prayudi, J.-P. Avouac, L. Prawirodirdjo and Y. Bock (2006). "Deformation and Slip along the Sunda Megathrust in the Great 2005 Nias-Simeulue Earthquake." Science 311(5769): 1897-1901.