WELLINGTON, July 25 (Xinhua) — Advanced seismic sensor technology is now deployed to study New Zealand’s Hikurangi Subduction Zone, revealing insights into slow-slip earthquakes.
Scientists have installed advanced borehole sensors off New Zealand’s east coast to monitor frequent slow-slip events and potential large quakes in the Hikurangi Subduction Zone.
The sensors detect slow-slip earthquakes, seismic events releasing energy over days or weeks, that play a key role in building and releasing tectonic stress along major faults, according to a statement released by Earth Sciences New Zealand (ESNZ).
“It’s like a ripple moving across the plate interface,” the statement said, quoting Josh Edgington of the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics in the United States, who led the project with Charles Williams, ESNZ geodynamic modeler.
New data from the Hikurangi Subduction Zone, expected later this year, may reveal more about slow-slip earthquakes and their role in the quake cycle, aiding hazard assessment of major faults in the active Pacific Ring of Fire, the ESNZ said. ■