A Far-Field Ground-Motion Model for the North Australian Craton from Plate-Margin Earthquakes

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Australian territory is just over 400 km from an active convergent plate margin with the collision of the Sunda–Banda Arc with the Precambrian and Palaeozoic Australian continental crust. Seismic energy from earthquakes in the northern Australian plate-margin region are channeled efficiently through the low-attenuation North Australian craton (NAC), with moderate-sized (Mw≥5.0) earthquakes in the Banda Sea commonly felt in northern Australia. A far-field ground-motion model (GMM) has been developed for use in seismic hazard studies for sites located within the NAC. The model is applicable for hypocentral distances of approximately 500–1500 km and magnitudes up to Mw 8.0. The GMM provides coefficients for peak ground acceleration, peak ground velocity, and 5%-damped pseudospectral acceleration at 20 oscillator periods from 0.1 to 10 s. A strong hypocentral depth dependence is observed in empirical data, with earthquakes occurring at depths of 100–200 km demonstrating larger amplitudes for short-period ground motions than events with shallower hypocenters. The depth dependence of ground motion diminishes with longer spectral periods, suggesting that the relatively larger ground motions for deeper earthquake hypocenters may be due to more compact ruptures producing higher stress drops at depth. Compared with the mean Next Generation Attenuation-East GMM developed for the central and eastern United States (which is applicable for a similar distance range), the NAC GMM demonstrates significantly higher short-period ground motion for Banda Sea events, transitioning to lower relative accelerations for longer period ground motions.