The Shillong Plateau and the great 1897 Assam earthquake

Abstract

Previous analysis of triangulation data of the Survey of India concluded that the great 1897 Assam earthquake occurred on a south dipping fault near the northern edge of the Shillong Plateau, which was named the Oldham fault. This attribution has been questioned on geological and geodetic grounds. We refine the triangulation data, adding recently discovered observations, and demonstrate that they require average slip of 25 ± 5 m on a fault that dips south at 40? beneath the plateau. The best fitting solution to the geodetic observations gives a rupture length of 79 km. However, the Chedrang fault, immediately to the west of the Oldham fault, appears to have slipped as a subvertical tear fault during or shortly after the 1897 earthquake, with over 10 m of down-to-the-west normal-sense slip. This observation suggests that the western end of the main rupture approached within a few kilometers of the Chedrang fault, giving a length of 95 km for the rupture. This range of parameters gives a magnitude 8.15