WELLINGTON, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- Scientists are preparing for New Zealand's largest ever deployment of seafloor earthquake recording instruments in a bid to learn more about the earthquake behavior of the tectonic plates beneath the east coast of the North Island.
A statement of New Zealand Institute of Geological and Nuclear Science (GNS) said on Monday that the seismometers will record earthquakes and slow-slip events that occur in an area known as the Hikurangi subduction zone which marks the boundary of the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates.
It is arguably New Zealand's most significant and largest plate boundary active fault, and is capable of generating a magnitude 8.5 earthquake that, in addition to widespread ground shaking, the statement said.
Involving scientists from New Zealand, Japan, the United States, and Britain, the large-scale collaborative project is aimed at better understanding the potential threat to New Zealand from the Hikurangi subduction zone, it said.
The seafloor and land-based instruments deployed will record echoes from within the Earth from both naturally occurring earthquakes and from acoustic signals generated by a U.S. research ship, which will be positioned off the East Coast, enabling scientists to create images of the plate boundary fault zone both underneath the sea and beneath the land, according to GNS.
New Zealand project leader Stuart Henrys of GNS Science said the data will help the understanding of why different areas of the plate boundary are behaving so differently.
