Project Period: Now - September 2021
Organisations: GNS Science, NIWA, Victoria University of Wellington, Massey University, University of Auckland, University of Otago, and the University of Canterbury
Project Funders: Endeavour Fund, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (New Zealand)
Project Location: East Coast of the North Island of New Zealand
Nō te tau, rua mano, tekau mā ono, tae noa atu ki te tau rua mano, e rua tekau mā tahi, ka rangahau tētahi whakaminenga kaipūtaiao nō Aotearoa, nō tāwāhi hoki i te paenga papaneke o Hikurangi kia whai mārama ai i ngā tūraru ka pāngia rānei ki Aotearoa nei. He āinga whakararo te paenga papaneke o Hikurangi nei, ā, kei reira ka āia te papaneke moana o Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa ki raro tonu i papaneke paparahi o Te Pāpaka-a-Māui. Nā te āinga whakararo e pērā ana ko tētahi momo hapa, ā, he nui ngā rū whenua me ngā tai āniwhaniwha ka hua ake, pērā me Sumatra i te tau rua mano mā whā, pērā me Hiri i te tau rua mano mā tekau, pērā hoki me Hapani i te tau rua mano tekau mā tahi. Ka tauakitia ngā mahi a kaipūtaiao nō Aotearoa e te pūtea nanaiore a Te Hīkina Whakatutuki.
A large team of national and international scientists will be studying the Hikurangi plate boundary to find out what risk it poses to New Zealand. The Hikurangi plate boundary is where the Pacific tectonic plate subducts (or dives underneath) the Australian tectonic plate and is what scientists call a subduction zone.
The Hikurangi subduction zone is poorly understood, yet potentially the largest source of earthquake and tsunami hazard in New Zealand. Subduction zones are a type of fault and are responsible for the largest and most powerful earthquakes and tsunamis in the world, such as Sumatra 2004, Chile 2010, and Japan 2011. We know that the Hikurangi subduction zone can produce large earthquakes and tsunamis, and that these events have occurred in the past. However, we don’t know how often these earthquakes tend to happen, nor do we know how large they can be.
A large component of the project involves building and installing seafloor sensors off the East Coast to detect offshore earthquakes, slow slip events, and reveal New Zealand’s offshore plate tectonic movements for the first time. Similar types of sensors could be used in tsunami and earthquake early warning systems in the future and will create new technological capability for New Zealand. Part of this project provides resources for New Zealand scientists to work on the new data being collected by visiting specialised research ships that carry out drilling and seismic imaging. This data will tell them about the physical conditions and rock types at the plate boundary, and reveal what is causing the Hikurangi subduction zone to move slowly (in slow slip events) or suddenly (in earthquakes). This helps scientists understand what has influenced earthquakes and tsunamis in the past, so they can better anticipate what might happen in the future.
The scientists will also be gathering geological and historical evidence for past large Hikurangi earthquakes to improve our understanding of subduction zone hazards posed to New Zealand. This involves collecting offshore cores and studying coastal sediments to explore the geological record of past earthquake and tsunami events. They will be working with iwi partners to integrate Mātauranga Māori of past Hikurangi earthquakes and tsunami.
For more information check out these three project fact sheets:
22 July 2021
Scientists say there is 26% chance of a magnitude 8 earthquake occurring on the southern portion of the Hikurangi s...
3 June 2021
Scientists from GNS Science and Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington are installing instruments acro...
14 April 2021
Scientists have started digging several pits along the south Wairarapa Coast to unearth the secrets of previous ear...
24 March 2021
New Zealand and US scientists have collected new data offshore that may give new insights into the M7.3 earthquake ...
10 March 2021
A state-of-the-art underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) called ROPOS is helping a team of New Zealand and US ...
24 November 2020
Students from Raphael House Rudolf Steiner School became scientists for the day as they learnt about faults, earthq...
13 November 2020
Scientists from New Zealand, Japan, and the United States are currently involved in two back-to-back voyages to inv...
17 July 2020
Researchers are collecting clues in the Pakuratahi Valley to determine when past Hikurangi subduction zone earthqua...
13 March 2020
Scientists searching for evidence of past earthquakes have dug a 90 metre long trench in Aramoana, southern Hawke...
4 March 2020
Earthquakes and slow slip events may be influenced by mountains on the ocean floor, or “seamounts”, according t...
28 January 2020
A newly-identified complex fault system north of Gisborne may shed new light on the risks of...
12 November 2019
Data collected from the Hikurangi subduction zone by an international team of scientists led by GNS Science shows t...
5 November 2019
Two of the country’s leading scientists will share the latest research into New Zealand’s largest and most acti...
29 October 2019
An international team of scientists sets off today onboard NIWA’s specialised research vessel Tangaroa to collect...
29 July 2019
Four of the country’s leading scientists will share the latest research into New Zealand’s largest and most act...
10 May 2019
Students from five Tairāwhiti schools will get a chance to bring science to life in the coming weeks and months as...
3 May 2019
Four of the country’s leading scientists will share the latest research into New Zealand’s largest and most act...
16 April 2019
Beneath the North Island of New Zealand there is a restless sleeper. Usually the sleeper is just breathing deeply b...
5 April 2019
A slow slip earthquake is currently taking place off the coast of Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay along the Hikurangi su...
30 November 2018
Hawke’s Bay people had the opportunity to learn more about New Zealand’s largest fault, the Hikurangi subductio...
1 November 2018
Geophysicist Laura Wallace of GNS Science was today named as a
26 October 2018
Valuable insights into the risk of earthquakes and tsunami from New Zealand’s largest fault line will be gained a...
5 October 2018
An international team of scientists sets off this weekend to place earthquake monitoring instruments along New Zeal...
23 May 2018
Scientists have asked for public help in finding three ocean bottom seismometers, on loan from Japan, that failed t...
15 May 2018
Young scientists have been making tsunami waves in the wave tank, shaking things up with their ‘earthquake proof ...
5 May 2018
Stretching down the length of the North Island’s east coast lies a sleeping geological giant - the Hikurangi subd...
29 April 2018
The research ship JOIDES resolution is undertaking scientific drilling research from March-May 2018 ...
19 April 2018
Napier will get the opportunity to learn more about New Zealand’s first offshore earthquake observatories that ar...
18 April 2018
Two world-class subseafloor observatories are now operating at the northern Hikurangi subduction zone where the Pac...
12 March 2018
An ambitious mission to lower two sub-seafloor observatories into the Hikurangi subduction zone east of the North I...
1 February 2018
Teachers have the opportunity to sign up for a live 'ship-to-shore' video experience with scientists on bo...
4 January 2018
The research ship JOIDES resolution is undertaking scientific drilling research from Dec-Jan 2018 and March-May 20...
19 December 2017
Scientists on board the research vessel JOIDES Resolution have carefully lowered the winning entries from the Eas.....
24 November 2017
Te Hapara Primary School and Gisborne Boys’ High take out top honours in the recent Hikurangi Plate Boundary comp...
25 October 2017
A Tairāwhiti (Gisborne) region school competition is now open to raise awareness of the Hikurangi plate boundary, ...
13 September 2017
\nLast November’s magnitude 7.8 Kaikōura quake sparked a series of major slow-slip events on the shallow part of...
5 July 2017
Everyone was up bright and early for breakfast at 6am this morning and it was nice having everyone there for our la...
4 July 2017
Overnight the multibeam was at work. A multibeam is an instrument that is used to map the seafloor. The instrument ...
3 July 2017
The crew notify us of when the multicorer is about to come and then every heads below and gets their safety gear on...
2 July 2017
We are now further down the coast and have taken a few cores off the coast of Wellington. There have been a few tim...
1 July 2017
I’m going to be honest here and say I think the geologists have more fun. I mean geologists get to play with mud!...
30 June 2017
Today marks the second stage of voyage with a focus on core samples off various sites off the coasts of Hawke’s B...
29 June 2017
Now that most of the instruments are out we had out first series of science presentation and looked at some of the ...
28 June 2017
At 5am this morning the crew put out the GPS buoy (pronounced boo-ee by the US amongst us and ‘boy’ by the NZer...
27 June 2017
It was a bit difficult getting to sleep last night with all the noise being created by the midnight to noon shift d...
26 June 2017
Before I left, I joked that there would be a day were I would write ‘sea sick’ and that would be it for the blo...
25 June 2017
After nearly 10 hours of sleep following my seasickness, I caught up on the meeting that I had missed from last nig...
24 June 2017
Late last night I was notified that my flight from Napier to Wellington was unfortunately cancelled due to the weat...
23 June 2017
This weekend I’ll be joining a team of scientists from NZ, USA and Japan aboard NIWA’s research vessel, Tangaro...
23 June 2017
A team of scientists will be learning more about the Hikurangi plate boundary over the next two weeks aboard NIWA...
15 June 2017
Communities on the East Coast of the North Island will get the opportunity to find out more about a research progra...
3 May 2017
Researchers from GNS Science have been working at the Pakarae River mouth north of Gisborne looking for evidence of...
27 March 2017
Have you ever wanted to escape to sea to work on a cutting-edge science project about New Zealand’s largest fault...
9 August 2016
Scientists from across the world will come to New Zealand in 2017 and 2018 to participate in a series of unpreceden...
1 April 2016
National and international scientists have been working on three different research projects that aim to investigat...
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