Slip rate estimation from tilting of marine terraces above an offshore listric thrust fault, Kaikoura, New Zealand

Slip on an offshore fault uplifted and tilted the Kaikoura Peninsula during the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake. Analysis of a 2012, 1m Lidar DEM shows that the uplifted Kaikoura marine terraces have been progressively tilted in the same manner since 120 ka. A Monte-Carlo analysis of tilt-age relationships, based on a model of listric faulting, and using published age data and Papuan and regional sea level curves, implies that slip rates have increased from 2.3 ± 1.3 mm/yr to 4.1 ± 1.2 mm/yr since c.60 ka. Comparison of the elevation of young, uplifted beaches surrounding the peninsula, with a Late Holocene sea level curve, suggests three earthquake events (including 2016) over 3 kyr. The timing of the earthquakes implies lower Late Holocene slip rates, compared with post-60 ka slip rates; comparison of these events with paleoseismic records of the Marlborough Fault System is interpreted to suggest latest Holocene clustering of seismicity