On 14th November 2016, the northeastern South Island of New Zealand was struck by a major Mw 7.8 earthquake. Field observations, in conjunction with InSAR, GPS, and seismology reveal this to be one of the most complex earthquakes ever recorded. The rupture propagated northward for more than 170 km along both mapped and unmapped faults, before continuing offshore at its northeastern extent. Geodetic and field observations reveal surface ruptures along at least 12 major faults, including possible slip along the southern Hikurangi subduction interface, extensive uplift along much of the coastline and widespread anelastic deformation including the ~8 m uplift of a fault-bounded block. This complex earthquake defies many conventional assumptions about the degree to which earthquake ruptures are controlled by fault segmentation, and should motivate re-thinking of these issues in seismic hazard models.One Sentence Summary: Major earthquake rips through evolving fault zone, defying conventional wisdom regarding the degree of fault segmentation during earthquake ruptures.

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Large earthquakes in mountain regions commonly trigger extensive landsliding and are important drivers of erosion, but the contribution of this landsliding to long-term erosion rates and seismic hazard remains poorly understood. Here we show that lake sediments record postseismic landscape response as a sequence of turbidites that can be used to quantify erosion related to large (moment magnitude, M w > 7.6) earthquakes on the Alpine fault, New Zealand. Alpine fault earthquakes caused a threefold increase in sediment fl ux over the ~50 yr duration of each postseismic landscape response; this represents considerable delayed hazard following earthquake-induced strong ground motion. Earthquakes were responsible for 27% of the sediment fl ux from the lake catchment over the past 1100 yr, leading us to conclude that Alpine fault earthquakes are one of the most important drivers of erosion in the range front of the Southern Alps.

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Coseismic canyon flushing reveals how earthquakes drive canyon development and deep-sea sediment dispersal on active margins.