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Co-seismic surface deformation relating to the March 23, 2012 MW 5.4 Ernabella (Pukatja) earthquake, central Australia: implications for cratonic fault scaling relations in cratonic settings

Created 17/10/2025

Updated 17/10/2025

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On 23 March 2012, at 09:25 UTC, an Mw 5.4 earthquake occurred in the eastern Musgrave Ranges of north-central South Australia, near the community of Ernabella (Pukatja). Several small communities in this remote part of central Australia reported the tremor, but there were no reports of injury or significant damage. This was the largest earthquake recorded on mainland Australia in the past 15 years and resulted in the formation of a 1.6 km long surface deformation zone that included reverse-fault scarps with a maximum vertical displacement of more than 0.5 m, extensive ground cracking, and numerous rock falls. The earthquake occurred in non-extended stable continental region (SCR) cratonic crust, more than 1900 km from the nearest plate boundary. Surface deformation from the Ernabella earthquake provides additional constraint on relations of surface-rupture length to earthquake magnitude. Such relations aid in interpreting Australia’s rich record of prehistoric seismicity and contribute to improved estimates of SCR seismic hazard worldwide. Based upon an analysis of new and reinterpretation of existing surface-rupture length data, faults in non-extended stable cratonic Australia appear to produce longer surface ruptures (for earthquakes larger than Mw ∼ 6:5) than rupture lengths estimated using existing moment-to rupture length scaling relations. The implication is that the estimated maximum, or characteristic, magnitude of paleoearthquakes in such settings may be overestimated where the estimate is based only on the length of the prehistoric fault scarp.

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Title Co-seismic surface deformation relating to the March 23, 2012 MW 5.4 Ernabella (Pukatja) earthquake, central Australia: implications for cratonic fault scaling relations in cratonic settings
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/en/dataset/cc38661a-e082-41b6-bb52-0c300b0d158e
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 "Co-seismic surface deformation relating to the March 23, 2012 MW 5.4 Ernabella (Pukatja) earthquake, central Australia: implications for cratonic fault scaling relations in cratonic settings". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/co-seismic-surface-deformation-relating-to-the-march-23-2012-mw-5-4-ernabella-pukatja-earthquak