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Earthquakes and tsunamis caused by low-angle normal faulting in the Banda Sea, Indonesia

Nature Geoscience volume 13, pages 312–318 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

As the world’s largest archipelagic country in Earth’s most active tectonic region, Indonesia faces a substantial earthquake and tsunami threat. Understanding this threat is a challenge because of the complex tectonic environment, the paucity of observed data and the limited historical record. Here we combine information from recent studies of the geology of Indonesia’s Banda Sea with Global Positioning System observations of crustal motion and an analysis of historical large earthquakes and tsunamis there. We show that past destructive earthquakes were not caused by the supposed megathrust of the Banda outer arc as previously thought but are due to a vast submarine normal fault system recently discovered along the Banda inner arc. Instead of being generated by coseismic seafloor displacement, we find the tsunamis were more likely caused by earthquake-triggered submarine slumping along the fault’s massive scarp, the Weber Deep. This would make the Banda detachment representative not only as a modern analogue for terranes hyper-extended by slab rollback but also for the generation of earthquakes and tsunamis by a submarine extensional fault system. Our findings suggest that low-angle normal faults in the Banda Sea generate large earthquakes, which in turn can generate tsunamis due to earthquake-triggered slumping.

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Fig. 1: The tectonics of slab rollback in the Banda Sea region.
Fig. 2: Crustal movement and faults in the Banda inner and outer arcs.
Fig. 3: Banda Sea earthquakes and seismic intensity modelling.
Fig. 4: Selected tsunami models of the 1852 Banda Sea event.

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Data availability

All of the seismic intensity observations used here are based on historical accounts available in the published literature20,21,25. Except for the newly estimated velocities in Supplementary Table 1, all of the GPS velocities are available from published sources45–48. The raw GPS data on which the new velocities in Supplementary Table 1 are based can be obtained from the Indonesian Geospatial Information Agency (BIG). The elevation data used for tsunami modelling is a combination of the Indonesian National Bathymetry (BATNAS)58 (see http://tides.big.go.id/DEMNAS/, last accessed in June 2019), a marine chart around the Banda Islands59, and SRTM-90m60.

Code availability

All of the codes used in this study have been described in published work and are available in the public domain. Tectonic block modelling was accomplished using the software TDEFNODE49, available at http://www.web.pdx.edu/mccaf/defnode.html (last accessed August 2019). The EQIAT code29 used for Bayesian inference of earthquake parameters from seismic intensity data is available at https://github.com/GeoscienceAustralia/EQIAT (last accessed August 2019). Earthquake ground-motion modelling was performed using Openquake61, available at https://github.com/gem/openquake (last accessed August 2019). Finally, the tsunami modelling used the JAGURS57 software available at https://github.com/jagurs-admin/jagurs.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to J. Dolan for very helpful comments. We thank Indonesia’s Geospatial Information Agency for making available the Indonesian National Bathymetry grid and the data from its continuous GPS network. We also thank T. Baba for teaching us how to use the JAGURS tsunami modelling software. J.M.P. was funded by Australian Research Council DECRA fellowship DE160100128 and I.R.P. by an Australian Awards scholarship and partially by a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Bridge Fellowship awarded to P.R.C. We also thank TGS and GeoData Ventures and R. Hall for providing the multibeam data used to derive the bathymetry image in Fig. 1. P.R.C. and J.D.G. publish with the permission of the CEO, Geoscience Australia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

    Phil R. Cummins, Ignatius R. Pranantyo, Jonathan M. Pownall & Siyuan Zhao

  2. Global Geophysics Research Group, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Bandung, Indonesia

    Phil R. Cummins

  3. Community Safety Branch, Geoscience Australia, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

    Phil R. Cummins & Jonathan D. Griffin

  4. Department of Geography, Geology, and Environment, University of Hull, Hull, UK

    Jonathan M. Pownall

  5. Department of Geology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Jonathan D. Griffin

  6. Geodesy Research Group, Faculty of Earth Science and Technology, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Bandung, Indonesia

    Irwan Meilano

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Contributions

P.R.C. led the writing of the paper, undertook the ground-motion modelling and supervised the analysis of historical accounts, the tsunami modelling and tectonic block modelling of the GPS data. I.R.P. conducted the tsunami modelling and analysis of historical accounts. J.M.P. provided the analysis of geologic evidence for slab rollback and of the evidence for slumping in the bathymetry data. J.D.G. undertook the Bayesian analysis of the historical intensity observations. I.M. analysed the raw GPS position data to determine crustal velocities. S.Z. conducted the tectonic-block-motion analysis of the GPS observations.

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Correspondence to Phil R. Cummins.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–3 and Tables 1 and 2.

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Cummins, P.R., Pranantyo, I.R., Pownall, J.M. et al. Earthquakes and tsunamis caused by low-angle normal faulting in the Banda Sea, Indonesia. Nat. Geosci. 13, 312–318 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-020-0545-x

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