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.