Coseismic river avulsion on surface rupturing faults: Assessing earthquake-induced flood hazard.

Abstract

Surface-rupturing earthquakes can produce fault displacements that abruptly alter the established course of rivers. Several notable examples of fault rupture-induced river avulsions (FIRAs) have been documented, yet the factors influencing these phenomena have not been examined in detail. Here, we use a recent case study from New Zealand's 2016 Kaikōura earthquake to model the coseismic avulsion of a major braided river subjected to ~7-m vertical and ~4-m horizontal offset. We demonstrate that the salient characteristics of the avulsion can be reproduced with high accuracy by running a simple two-dimensional hydrodynamic model on synthetic (pre-earthquake) and "real" (post-earthquake) deformed lidar datasets. With adequate hydraulic inputs, deterministic and probabilistic hazard models can be precompiled for fault-river intersections to improve multihazard planning. Flood hazard models that ignore present and potential future fault deformation may underestimate the extent, frequency, and severity of inundation following large earthquakes.