Vic Dent

• MSc
• university associate at Curtin University

The wheatbelt region of southwest Western Australia is an area of elevated intraplate seismicity. The seismicity is highly clustered, with 80 active clusters identified over the last 20 years. This report reviews the seismicity between July 2022 and June 2024, which includes continuing seismicity from the Arthur River region, and a damaging magnitu...

A seismic sequence near Arthur River, in the southwest of Western Australia, began in January 2022 and has continued into late 2023. Since September 2022 the seismicity has continued to be monitored, but by a reduced network of field stations. Locations of the newer events are presented here, plus relocations of some of the better recorded events o...

The seismicity near Arthur River, southwest Western Australia, is reviewed for the period January-October 2022. Up to three Public Seismograph Network (PSN) stations were used at 5 different sites to monitor the sequence, from about two weeks after the initial activity. Good locations were obtained from events that occurred within two periods when...

Previous reports on southwest Western Australia (SWA) seismicity have identified 80 cluster locations, mostly from activity in the last 10 years. Earthquakes in the region in 2021-22 are reviewed here and allocated to cluster locations where considered appropriate. Most of the seismicity can be assigned to one of 18 cluster locations considered act...

There were ~130 located earthquakes in southwestern WA in the 12 months July 2020 to June 2021 and they are examined in this report. As in previous years, the activity is highly clustered. Twenty-three probable cluster sites are identified, 18 of which may have been active prior to the current period. Two clusters are of note, southwest of Koorda a...

The Burakin earthquake sequence of 2001-2002 in southwest Western Australia represents one of the most significant sequences in Australia since the Tennant Creek events of 1988. The sequence included three magnitude ML 5 events, and an estimated 18,000 smaller events. Elevated levels of seismicity continued into 2005, with occasional events still o...

Earthquake clustering has long been noted as a significant feature of the seismicity of southwest Western Australia. The cluster locations are of significance because they are sites of repeating seismicity for over a decade or more. Fifty-one cluster centres have been previously defined, mostly from seismicity during the 2012-2017 period. Seismicit...

A significant series of earthquakes occurred near Burakin in the northern WA wheat belt between September 2001 and June 2002, including three ML 5 events. Geoscience Australia (GA) deployed up to 15 field seismographs in the area at various times in that period to provide better earthquake locations, but a detailed review of the data has not been p...

Much of the seismicity in southwest WA occurs in localised groups of recurring earthquakes, or clusters. Four potential cluster sites have been identified in the Great Southern Region of WA in the period January to November 2019. A group near Newdegate contained the largest event of the year (ML 4.3), and it is suggested these events belong to an e...

An ML 5.7 earthquake occurred NW of Rocky Gully, in southern WA on 16 Sep 2018 and formed a N-S trending surface rupture, visible intermittently over about 5 km. The event was followed by a ML 5.3 event about 7 weeks later. Geoscience Australia (GA) installed 5 field stations 4 days after the main event, and recorded about 900 mostly small aftersho...

A region about 70 km southeast of Norseman is of interest because it has been the source of four magnitude 5 events since 1985. Some new phase information for earthquakes in the area has been obtained from a temporary network installed by the Australian National University, and from the Public Seismic Network in WA. Epicentres from the region are r...

Clustered intra plate seismicity in south west Australia

On 18 August 2016 a magnitude ML5.8 earthquake occurred 63 km East of Bowen, Queensland, in the Whitsunday Passage, between the Great Barrier Reef and the coast, about 950 km NNW of Brisbane. Of the 14 events recorded in the east coast region of Queensland since1880, this event was the second largest. The event appears to have a strike slip focal m...

This report is the 4th in a series of annual reports describing the annual seismicity of the South West Australia (SWA) zone since June 2013. In previous reports, 36 earthquake cluster localities were identified. In this report, covering the period June 2016-May 2017, 101 of the 207 events located by Geoscience Australia in the SWA zone have been r...

Earthquake clusters in southwestern Western Australia between 1990 and 2016 have been mapped using a visual perusal of the Geoscience Australia earthquake catalogue. Also plotted are 36 relatively well-determined clusters (Dent 2014, 2015, 2016), from re-evaluation of epicentres mostly between 2014 and 2016. Approximately 100 centres have been iden...

An ML 5.0 earthquake occurred in the Kalgoorlie-Boulder area on 20th April 2010. An aftershock survey conducted by Geoscience Australia provided locations for about 300 aftershocks which occurred from 3 to ~ 45 days after the event, and a north-south oriented zone possibly correlating with the Boulder-Lefroy Fault was suggested by Bathgate et al. (...

We present new paleoseismicity data for the 30 km long and 2.5 m high Hyden fault scarp in Western Australia, which, when combined with the results of previous research, provides the most extensive record of surface-rupturing earthquakes yet assembled for an ‘active’ Australian intracratonic fault. The data indicate that four to five surface-ruptur...

The Archaean rocks of the Yilgarn Craton comprise the largest geological entity in Western Australia and one of the largest areas of Archaean crust anywhere in the world. However, poor outcrop has prevented a thorough understanding of the structure of the crust in the region, a subject of particular interest being the relationship between high-grad...

Seismicity in the Australian region in 1987 was above average due to the occurrence of foreshocks of the three large (magnitude 6 to 7) earthquakes near Tennant Creek in January 1988. There were 173 events of magnitude 3 or more, but 64 of these were Tennant Creek foreshocks. There were 37 events with magnitudes of 4 or more, and six of these had m...

In September 1976 a weak fumarolic area developed on Kadovar Island, a volcano that may have last erupted in 1700 AD. The geology of Kadovar is described here for the first time, and an account is also given of the volcano's tectonic setting. Regular inspections of the new thermal area were made over two years; seismic and magnetic observations wer...

Effects of an MS 7.9 Tsunamigenic earthquake near Bougainville, Papua New Guinea in July 1975